Welcome to Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film video major, and alumni profiles.

Welcome to another episode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.

My name is Elena Chiu.

I graduated in 2025 and today I'm joined by alumni Kyle Flannery, a producer

at Harbor Picture Company in New York.

Welcome, Kyle.

Thank you for joining us today.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Why don't we start off with a little bit about your journey into the industry

and your experience with college and how you got to where you are now.

Sure, yeah.

So my earliest memory of jumping right into film was in elementary school.

I remember having the time of my life animating a PowerPoint slideshow to

REM's "It's the End of the World" song, and it was the timing of everything.

One click and everything else had to animate after that.

And I think that was my first memory of falling in love with the process

and marrying sound and picture.

I grew up a little bit, and went to college and thought I had to

make a lot of money and study something a bit more traditional.

So I went for the science route.

I was thrown into a larger class size, talking about things that I did

not care about and knew very little about in terms of science, and knew

I had to switch it up very quickly.

I am a very, analytical person and I thought that that was where my

skillset should go towards, I should go towards the sciences for that reason.

And honestly, at the time, I was really inspired by some of the doctor TV shows

that I was watching, embarrassingly, but quickly figured out that that wasn't

my journey and that I really wasn't interested in sciences, that I was more

interested in the storytelling of it all.

So that's where I decided that film was the path I wanted to take.

I took the intro to filmmaking course, switched up my studies entirely.

Then after graduating, I went back home, cut grass for six, eight

months, saved up a couple thousand dollars, and wanted to make the trip

to New York to see what I could do.

I thought about LA, but it was a couple hundred too many miles away from

Michigan, which is home in my family.

So went the New York route.

My story for New York was that I had saved a bunch of money and decided I was

gonna Airbnb for a month or so, try to get a couple of freelance gigs and see if

I could make it out here, see if I could find something that would stick, and then

eventually find a more long-term solution.

And I was fortunate to have pretty much all of that fall right into place.

I did a couple freelance gigs in the art department, and then met a person

who met a person who met a person who finally got me into where I'm

currently at, in a post house in New York called Harbor Picture Company.

And I've been here for seven years with my current role as

a, Picture Finishing Producer.

That's amazing.

We emphasize networking a lot in classes, so it's neat to see how knowing just one

person can set you off on a whole path.

Absolutely.

It's very textbook to say networking is where it's at.

But it truly is, especially in a place like New York, where

they don't take your resume as serious when you're out of state.

They wanna see someone who's in front of you.

They wanna see what your qualities are, who you are, and they want

someone to be able to vet that.

So the word of mouth and the networking and the reach that

that can bring is, very powerful.

So what kind of projects do you do at Harbor Pictures?

So Harbor is a production and post-production company.

We service film, television, and the advertising industry.

We have our headquarters in New York, but we're also based across LA, UK,

Chicago, and Atlanta, with ranging scales of services at each one of those.

While in New York, I'm part of the post team.

I work with about 20 to 30 people daily, mostly other producers

or operators or artists.

Globally, I think we have around 300 to 400.

It's expanding, it's going up, it's going down.

All the departments that we offer would be from live action, commercial

production, dailies, offline editorial, visual effects, sound, and color.

I play a role mostly in color, but finishing process is I help bring

all those components together, or the summation of all of that,

into final delivery to a studio.

I work in the digital intermediate process, known as the DI, which is a

fun thing to Google if you have time.

And it's the final post-production stage, where footage is digitized or otherwise

processed, color corrected, and then we enhance with different special effects.

And then, like I said, we are responsible for the final delivery.

So we're really the last stop, after it's been creatively edited,

we bring it online, we make sure that everything's up to quality.

We add the finishing touches, color, VFX, and then it's out the door.

Awesome.

So what does your workflow look like day to day, working with all these

people to get these projects finished?

Yeah, day to day wise, it's expect the unexpected.

Nothing is ever the same.

We jokingly say that we put out a fire about every five, ten minutes.

What I'm mostly doing is I'm scheduling artists on tasks that help bring us

to like the greater role of whatever the objective is for that day, and

then ultimately the final delivery.

I work with the offline team.

They essentially send me their edit.

I receive the turnover, so whether that's EDLs, Avid bins, Quicktimes,

anything that would replicate or demonstrate what their edit is.

I give that to my editors, we recreate that.

It's called the onlining process so instead of editing with low-res proxy

files, we use the high-res files, which is like shining a light in a dark room.

You see a bunch of issues.

You see crew reflections, you see pixel hits, you see technical issues.

We help solve all that.

So that's my job, to find that and diagnose it and then assign it

to whether that's a VFX artist or my conform artist or a colorist.

So day-to-day I'm juggling all of those things.

So scheduling the artist, I am overseeing the general schedule of all of that, in

addition to tracking and billing expenses.

Really I'm a necessary middleman putting out the fires in creative ways that you

really won't see on the screen, but do translate towards the final product.

Right.

When I was in school and doing a lot of producing, it's a lot of work that

doesn't ever get shown and people don't really know what's happening, but

if it doesn't get done, you'll know.

Yeah, I don't do anything creative in my day in the sense that you're gonna see

it on the screen, but there is so much creativity in solving a problem when they

don't have the budget, they don't have the time, and they also don't know how to tell

me what their issue is or what they want.

So at the end of the day, there's a lot of, troubleshooting and problem solving.

And you have to find effective ways to do all of that and keeping everybody

happy, keeping your clients happy, keeping your artists happy, and somehow

trying to keep yourself happy as well.

That's the real trick.

I can see where your analytical nature comes in handy 'cause you're

able to see the problem and see all of the potential solutions or other

problems that might arise from that.

For sure.

When I was choosing film, I thought that that fulfilled both sides

of my brain, the analytical side, and then more of my creative side.

But in my current role, creative just means a different thing.

So it's like doubling down on my analytical.

So I know that you do producing, but what are all of the roles that

people can take at Harbor pictures?

So in the.

post, department that I work in, we have producers, operators, color science and

technical support and client services.

So your producers, that encompasses the head of our production, then down

to executive producers, supervising producers, senior producer.

Everyone down from the supervising to senior to the producer, like I

am, are doing effectively the same things, but there's different levels

of responsibilities at each role.

So what we do is we're doing the post scheduling, so the turnover,

all the way through the digital intermediate process to delivery.

We are guiding the workflows and responsible for billing.

You also have your operators, which are your colorists, and then

the colorists have assistants.

Then we have conform artists, visual effects artists in our digital lab.

They all serve different functions to the DI if that's color, conform, editing

effects, or making deliverables.

With the color science and technical support, roles, they are helping to

guide the color pipeline, and they also calibrate the rooms and the equipment and

make sure that everything is in there.

And then the client services, they help man our front desks, they

provide meal services to the clients.

That is one of our more entry level roles.

In addition to, I didn't mention it, under the producers, we also have coordinators,

which is an entry level role as well.

What do you think is your favorite part of your job?

My favorite part of the job is the unexpected reach that I think I have.

like you were mentioning earlier, there's a lot of things we do in the background

that people will never know about.

And it really is nice to be recognized, and not to be too sappy, but to be

recognized and working with people that I read about in textbooks, or I was going

to the theaters as a kid and seeing their work and being inspired, and now I'm

walking them into the theater and dropping them off in the room with my colorist,

or they're directly asking me questions or I'm riding the elevator up with them.

I think that's the exciting part is, and as a New Yorker, you're not

allowed to fan girl over the fact that you're in the elevator with your idol.

But just having that reach and being around these people makes

it all worth it in the end.

And then also just having your parents proud and taking a photo

of the end credits on a film and then texting it to you.

What we do is not saving lives, but it is important and it brings people

joy, and I think that's the best part of my day, is getting recognized and

having a little bit of pride in myself that I've come a bit of a way and still

a lot to do, but it's very exciting.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

Seeing your name in the credits can be so cool because it's tangible proof

that you contributed to something and the product that you see in

front of you, you help to shape that.

Exactly.

So what kind of projects do you like to work on most?

I know that Harbor does a lot of different types of projects,

but what kinds do you do?

So the projects that I do, it's a large scale of either that's a episodic or

a feature, is what it comes down to, and when I'm talking about feature,

it's not so much documentaries.

We do some of those, but we do a fair amount of other narrative work instead.

So my favorite would be features, because when you're doing an episodic,

let's say it's like eight episodes or sometimes 12, you're doing 12

features, you're doing eight features.

They're all an hour in length.

They have extreme amount of VFX, and the timing of all of those is

almost more close to a commercial workflow where each week you're

working on something new, and quickly.

So working on an episodic can be very challenging and

involve a lot of scheduling.

A lot of scheduling.

Where a feature is a little bit more drawn out in a slower pace.

And a feature, everything is sitting right in front of you, there's

less issues to be flagged than on episodic where it's eight turnovers.

Hopefully that makes sense.

The stakes are just as high, but it's a little bit less challenging in my opinion.

Yeah.

So you like narrative better, but when you do work on the episodic ones and

you really feel the stress of all the weekly episodes, what do you do to

take a step back and relax and make sure that you're not getting burnt out?

It's a really good question.

I think that that is something I'm still exploring and still trying to figure out.

One thing that you have to try to remember to get through the day

is that we're not saving lives.

What we're doing is important, but it's not that important.

It's not the end of the world if you can't do something.

Yeah, sure, a client will be upset, and there may be repercussions from it,

but nobody's going to die if I don't deliver this file by the end of the day.

And really it comes down to that sometimes, and also recognizing that

I'm doing something that I should be enjoying, and so I can't let every moment

try to stress me out, about the what ifs or anything else that's unknown.

I try to be more present, is my approach.

But I will say that I am quite a reactive person when you're getting

all those emails and they're rolling in and this is happening and that's

happening and the schedule's changed.

And I won't lie to you, in post, that happens all the time, every day.

During this meeting, I'm seeing emails rolling in about the schedules that need

to change for tomorrow and the next day.

So it all happens.

It'll all get done, but, it is an inevitable thing to be overloaded,

and stressed out in general.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Dirk Koning

Memorial Film and Video scholarship.

Here's Gretchen Vinnedge remembering Dirk Koning.

The Koning Scholarship enables students to get that kind of an education, to be

a good filmmaker, to be able to express their voice and to continue Dirk's dream.

For more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now, back to the show.

So what kind of surprises did you encounter when you were looking for a job?

I think the surprise that I encountered wasn't necessarily in the looking for

the job, but it's where I ended up, and that was in post-production entirely.

That wasn't something that I had on my radar when I was going to school, and it's

not even until I moved out to New York did I really kind of expand the scope.

When I was going to school, post meant you wanted to edit.

If I was sitting in the room with all of these other students, it felt like I was

with editors and people that wanted to be doing some kind of editing function.

And that's not where my skillset was or that wasn't where my passion was at.

But that's a very narrow way of looking at it.

And again, that's me now looking back and recognizing

how small of a pond I came from.

When you're dropped into the bigger world, post has so much

more to offer than just editing.

My skillset and my aspirations to produce are very much a part

of the process already in post.

What I wanna do, I can do in post.

And that hadn't crossed my mind until I was put in a role of the coordinator and

I saw the trajectory that I could take and the tasks that I was being asked to do as

a coordinator, I was like, I can do this.

This is actually my skillset.

So regardless of what department it falls under, there's still so

many different options that you have to keep your mind open to.

Were there any experiences that you had at GV that shaped your career journey?

Yes.

From Grand Valley, I got my foundational understanding of the entire film

process, from pre to production to post and everything in between.

That was a very strong foundation for jumping out here into

the world that I'm in now.

Another place I got a lot of hands-on experience was working at the

Promotions Office for the Student Life.

I was doing some producer function there, so I got a lot of real

world experience, in a sense.

And also I worked on a lot of senior theses.

I am being introduced to the Promotions Office my sophomore year?

Maybe my freshman year?

I was thrown onto senior theses very early, and had no idea what I

was doing, but I learned a lot of hands-on skills and things that are

applicable to this day in post now.

What we do comes after all the things I studied, so it's very helpful

to know what people are doing, how they're going through it, and having

a general understanding of all that, which has helped me to this day.

Yeah, knowing the process of everybody else helps you do your own job better

'cause you understand where they're coming from and why they might be

asking the things that they are.

Exactly.

Nothing is segmented and you're never working alone in your own little bubble.

There's always a cause and effect, and the reason they're asking you for

something in post is because something happened in production or something

wasn't discussed in pre-production.

There's always a cause and effect, and knowing the other parts is very helpful.

So some of our students want to move to New York someday.

What do you like about living there, or what are some of the

challenges that you would've wanted to know before moving out there?

So living in New York, it is very fast paced.

It's exciting.

Stressful.

A lot more diverse than the West Michigan that I came from.

It's inspiring, it's dirty, it's everything, it's very real.

What I love about it is there's always something to do.

There's always people to meet.

You have so much opportunity at your fingertips, not even speaking

professionally, but I love to thrift.

I can go to any thrift store and find a really great deal, on something

that I wouldn't find elsewhere, or I wanna go hang out with my friends,

there's unlimited bars and there's unlimited times that they're all open.

When you move out here, it can be challenging, especially

in the form that I did.

I didn't have any context, really, other than some of the

alumni that I reached out to.

I had some alumni that really helped me out when I first moved out here.

But when you come without a lot, it can be lonely and you can be

overwhelmed by the whole thing.

But with time it eventually becomes home.

When I moved out, the things that I wish I was told was, you can't do something

on a weekend in New York without spending a couple hundred dollars.

Everything, any kind of experience, costs money unless

you want to go sit at the park.

So there was always that.

The one thing I mistakenly and stupidly did not do was budget for the train.

So that's another $140 for a month, which really isn't that bad when you, take

into account what a car would've cost me.

The move out here can be challenging.

My sibling just went through a move from Wisconsin to New York, and there's

a lot of qualifications you have to do to be able to get an apartment.

So you have to be realistic about that and do your research.

Make sure that you have all of the things that are necessary and

prepare to go through that process.

Realistically, it can be a big jump, but, if you have people to support you,

I would a hundred percent lean on that.

Take advantage of the couches that you might be able to loan for a week or two

while you're out here giving a dry run.

That's pretty much it.

Do you think there's anything unique about the industry in New York that you didn't

expect or things that have changed about it in the years that you've been there?

I think one thing that is unique or maybe a misconception is that

New Yorkers are mean or too hard.

It's really that everybody has a place to be and they're just trying to get there.

And it can be a little bit cutthroat in that sense, but people are generally a

lot friendlier than you would imagine and segueing it more into the film

industry even, so the post industry is pretty large, but very connected.

Anywhere that you've been, people know about you and word will spread.

I can speak to somebody in my office who knows everybody over

at this other post house, ' cause that's where they came from.

There's just a lot of connection and everybody generally knows everybody,

so you never want to give anybody the wrong impression and you always

wanna stay as friendly as possible and professional because it's a

lot more tight-knit community, I think, than people would imagine.

How did you work your way up in the industry?

Since you just talked about how everybody knows everybody, how did you kind of

get to know somebody and know everybody?

I mentioned it earlier, I started out freelancing a bit, I was in the art

department, and one thing that I did that I would really recommend is when

you freelance, looking at the call sheet, looking at the people that you're working

with, grabbing all of their names, and then just looking them up on LinkedIn.

See where they came from, and then having conversations

with them when you're on set.

Like, hey, what are you working on?

Trying to figure out where they're going.

When I was on set, I had found a woman who had been at a post

house that I was interested in.

I found that through her LinkedIn and then, after working with her for

a bit, I brought that up and she was like, oh yeah, I know that place.

Like, yeah, they're always hiring, but I actually know of a better

place that might have a position that you might be good for.

And I said, oh, okay.

Yeah, let's go through that process.

So, she put me in contact with a producer who was at Harbor at that time.

I went through a interview process and it was amazing.

So I got my foot in here.

but the fun fact was after I went through three or four rounds of interviews.

They called me on Christmas Eve and they said, you didn't get the job.

And I'm like, okay.

At the time I was in Michigan and very sad.

Something in the back of my mind said, don't give up hope.

I said, thanks so much for opportunity, would love to be on the radar next

time you're looking for someone.

And it wasn't two weeks later that they had called me up again, said,

Hey, the current person didn't work.

You're next in line.

Do you want the gig?

And I said, yes.

And so I hopped back on my plane back to New York in January, and

I had started that following week.

So, yeah, it started with the networking on site, doing freelance

things, meeting the right person, getting in the door, staying

positive, and then finally got here.

I started as a coordinator, and then I was promoted to associate producer

and then to producer at this point.

And then halfway along the way when I was an associate producer, I was headhunted

by a different company and leveraged that offer into becoming a producer at Harbor.

So it's always competitive out there and if somebody else sees your worth,

I 'm a proponent for taking that and using it for what it's worth, and then

trying to get the bump that you need.

So that's what I did here, which worked out well.

I need to do it again very soon.

What was that switch from freelancing to more corporate work like?

it was everything that I wanted.

I wanted stability in the sense that I didn't want to

have to look for my next gig.

I didn't want to have to worry about my next paycheck, and I

didn't want to have to worry about setting up my health insurance.

Those were all just things that I don't want to have to add to my list.

Being a producer, you might think that like, oh, he wouldn't mind

setting those things up for himself.

When it comes to my personal setup and organization of things, doesn't

hold a flame to like what I can do as a professional producer.

I didn't wanna have to handle any of that, so that was amazing to be under

employment full-time, have paid time off.

Those were all things that I was looking for from the start.

I was never really a big freelance guy to begin with, so

it was an amazing jump for me.

Yeah.

You wanna produce film things, not your healthcare and, Yeah, not your life.

I want that to be an autopilot.

And then the rest of the things, I can produce.

Is there anything that you miss from freelancing, even

if it wasn't your favorite?

Anything I missed?

I got to travel a little bit here and there, which was nice.

I got to be a bit more hands-on.

I'm a very crafty person.

I like to sew.

I paint, I do random crafts here and there.

And when I was on set, that's what I was doing, finding creative

solutions in a more hands-on way.

I got to do a bit of shopping on the company's dime, which is always fun.

So those were perks that were nice, but yeah, I don't get to do that much anymore.

What kind of skills have you learned while being a producer, or what

skills are you trying to learn more?

As a producer, it's being a manager of people of time, of budgets, being

an organizer of all the documents and the people, the time, the budgets.

The communicating, figuring out how to say difficult things or telling

people how to do something in the most effective way, not wasting anybody's time.

Also being financially focused and trying to get the most money for the company

while also servicing your clients.

It's like a nuance that I'm still learning, but those were the skills

that I generally need, I'm working at.

I would say that how I go about learning those new skills

is really a trial by fire.

It's not something that I just walked in the front door and had on the first day.

One of my early mentors, he would say something to the effect of you don't

need to know how to make the pizza.

I'll teach you how to do that, you just have to be willing.

It's learning the skills and adapting in real time, that I think is important.

Yeah.

Your attitude can be so much more important than your actual skills.

As long as you're willing to learn, people are always willing to teach you as long

as they know that you care about it.

For sure.

and not being afraid to ask the questions.

We've had a lot of coordinators come and go here, or even interns come and go.

And I think the things that sets some of them apart is asking questions, not

necessarily about what's in front of them, but asking questions about the

process and the bigger picture things.

So you're understanding, not only am I asking you to send out this file and to

say these certain things, like here's how it services the large picture if you

operate in this way, and asking like, oh, I'm doing this because of this, right?

Those are the questions I think that lead you into skills that

you can develop on your own.

You don't want anybody spoonfeeding you things or holding your hand

through absolutely everything.

I think approaching it with a very open mind and humbly, and then

asking questions that serve as a bigger picture are really important.

Do you have any advice for students who may be looking into going into post or

post producing, and what kinds of things that they should focus on, either in

their learning or in their skillset?

Yeah, start working on all of those skills that I had mentioned

early and in everything you do.

Don't cut any corners because this one's not as important as that one.

Try to always stay consistent and with your quality of work

and what you're able to do.

And then I would say a more direct note for anybody who's coming out here,

preparing your documents and trying to sell yourself on these jobs is recognize

that if you're coming from, like I did, a small town in Michigan, and you went

to school at Grand Valley, you did senior theses, you did a little bit of freelance,

that you're coming from a fairly small pool into a much, much larger pool.

So when you're selling yourself, just recognizing that you need to tailor

how you're selling yourself to people.

Don't come in and go, my name's Kyle and I'm a DP, I'm a director,

I'm an editor and I'm a producer.

I'm everything you need.

Hire me.

' Cause they're probably not looking for all of those things in one.

You can wear all those hats, sure, but my advice would be, whatever

they need, that's what you are.

Market that, and then all the other things that you can provide to them are a bonus,

and that can be a subpoint here or there, but I would say that if someone's looking

for a producer, you are a producer, that's what you do and here's how you do it.

Unless you're working in a smaller place that does want you

to wear the multiple hats, sure.

Like I mentioned before, working with professionals that have been in the

textbooks, been in the field, been on screens for decades before I even existed,

it doesn't bode well to walk in and say that you wear their hat plus four more.

Recognize where you're coming from and be humble, but also be confident

in what you can provide them.

And then show up and show out.

What is your favorite thing about your career or your experience in New York?

Not to be sappy, it just feels like you're living the dream.

I never thought that I could throw a stone this far, or be doing the

things that I'm doing every day.

It's kind of what I've always dreamed of.

I'm working on sequels.

I'm working with the same directors or DPs that shaped some of my love for cinema.

And that really excites me and keeps me going.

For New York, I feel generally very safe being the person that I am and

having passion for things that I do.

I can be myself.

You can walk around with confidence in who you are, and you can really be your

best self, or try to be your best self.

Those are all the things that I think are great about New York.

That's sweet and that's a perfect end to our podcast today.

Thank you so much for talking to me and sharing your experience.

This has been really informative and I'm glad that I got to talk to you.

Of course.

Thanks, Elena.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.

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