Film Producer – Owner and Founder of Haven Entertainment

>> Hi, my name's Kevin Mann. I'm owner and founder of Haven Entertainment. We are a production management company. We produce film, TV, and documentaries, and also represent writers, directors, and actors all, throughout all media. I mean living in Los Angeles is obviously a, a bit of a culture shock coming from Washington, D.C. But it's, you have to be here if you want to do it. You could probably pull it off in New York for a time, but then at some point I think you do need to make the move to Los Angeles just for contacts, networking, and there's more opportunities. Too many people want to do this job to go and just try to let it happen on, on its own. It won't. So my, my biggest piece of, of advice is to just go out and do some, make stuff. Make shorts, make music videos, make stupid little comedies with your friends. Just learn by doing. Don't, don't expect something just to fall in your lap. The part of the process I like the most, I think is day one of filming. You're, you're setting off on the-- the journey's starting, but it's happening. There's no more talk about it, there's no more raising money, there's no more futzing with the script or casting or any of that stuff, which is all a blast. But at day one, when you've got your director and your cast and everybody's there and you're-- everybody's excited. The, the sky is the limit. It's a really, really fun period of, of making a, a, a film or a television show. We look for-- really good material comes first. We're not a company that specifically does comedies or dramas or documentaries. But we really try to look for really good material that we think jives with what we want to do as a company. We end up doing a lot of comedies and documentaries here, because that's what we like to do. But it starts with the script. It starts with finding a great piece of material. From there, you're going to attach your talent, whether it's the director or the actors. Typically you go to the director first, because you want to have the director have his input on the talent. So I, I got the, you know, very lucky opportunity to do a documentary on LeBron James. I think it's the, the poster behind us. And it was a really cool project that was brought to me through a college filmmaker who had followed him when he was in high school. You know, say what you will about LeBron, whether you like him or don't like him, nobody doesn't know who LeBron is. Ninety-year old women who don't watch basketball probably know his name. So to see someone, to be able to capture someone going through that, that period from 6th, 7th grade on through high school, we thought was special. And what we thought was even more special was the not basketball stuff. The teammate stuff, the friendship stuff, the loyalty stuff. The one thing you have to prepare yourself for is judgment. You're putting a product out there for people to like or not like. So, you have to be okay with it. No one's ever made a project that everyone likes. There's a, there's a, a significant amount of people that might like something. There might be one that you make that's terrible. And I've made my fair share of terrible projects. But that's, that's part of the process. You know, you're going to make mistakes. You're going to fail, but you know, the, the, the fun of it is, you have a new job, always. You're always doing something different.