Meet Your Makers: Saskia d'Altena on Making The Climb with No Handouts
Saskia d’Altena is a producer based between NYC and London, originally from the UK. She spent three years in Tisch’s Film and TV undergraduate program before leaving to become a partner of artist collective Holyrad Studio where she developed their production house and mentorship programs. She has since produced for top brands & award winning agencies, always assembling teams that put underrepresented artists at the forefront.
She is currently an EP at production company Easy Mondays, representing a roster of 10+ directors. Headshot by @_matkat
LBB> What first attracted you to production - and has it been an industry you’ve always worked on or did you come to it from another area?
Saskia> I fell into film production the same way as many others, I was 15 and not particularly academic - my art teacher told me I couldn’t draw for shit (and I came from a family of painters), my mum said paying for a photography degree would be a waste of money, and so I started to explore film. I picked up Sydney Lumet’s Making Movies and instantly fell in love with all his stories about production/film sets. I looked up film programs in both the UK and the US, and I had my heart set on NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
I started making films on iMovie - I’d go film my sister doing trapeze and edit it to some alt-j track, I compiled all these videos I’d previously taken of drunk crowds at Magaluf and cut them into a creepy montage with a Bonobo song, I also used a lot of my photographs to build parallel character stories using a split screen and recorded my own sounds to sync with it.
This was during my last year at school and as I started to experiment with video, my art teacher called my mum in for a meeting and said Saskia needs to take a gap year and work out what she’s good at because there’s no way she’s getting into a film program let alone NYU.
Perhaps it was the morsel of Americanisation I have from my mum’s side of the family (both her parents left their respective countries and came to the states) that refused to hear the teacher, and instead I applied for a BFI intensive film course outside of school.
I got in with one of those weird Magaluf montage videos, and this is really where I fell in love with film and production. It was a bit of a “yeah, this is my forever” moment. We were put into groups to write short films together, and then assigned different roles to make the film.
Mine was cinematographer.
At the family and friends award ceremony our film won the 'Audience Choice' award. It was all very sweet. I think it was really my first taste of just how collaborative production is - how involved so many different people are in the script, in the making. And that carries over from the writers room (or, for commercials, let's say the treatment phase) right onto the set.
LBB> What was your first role in the production world and how did this experience influence how you think about production and how you grew your career?
Saskia> After PA-ing a lot of shoots I quickly moved to the position of assistant director and worked on seven back to back short films before dropping out of uni because I was (naturally) failing the majority of my classes due to my schedule on sets. I told the school I needed to take a year off for my mental health, and I never came back.
When I think back on it, AD-ing was probably the first sign of me naturally moving towards producing. I was extremely detail oriented, I had a knack for schedules/logistics/shoot capabilities, I could command crew (and directors) and I knew how to take a script and make it a viable shooting script without sacrificing its impact.
The difficulty I had with AD-ing, and it's still an insecurity to this day now as a producer, was that I quickly became the girl with a clipboard bossing guys around who were doing “the real work”. Or at least I could tell that was how I was perceived.
On a very difficult underwater shoot I, perhaps not so appropriately, yelled at a DP (who’s in the water in his scuba suit holding a massive camera) in front of the entire crew because he was not listening to my direction that was specifically talking about safety (what he was about to do was going to cause an electrical explosion) and no matter how many times I explained, he pushed back.
I realised he wasn’t actually listening to my words, so I raised (slash, yelled) them. And it was very embarrassing for him. I was also about 10-15 years younger than him.
After a few of those experiences I became a lot more selective of my teams and who I wanted to work with.
I definitely had a bit of a "fuck you" mentality to the film bro club.
I went into stills producing because I had a big community of female and LGBTQ+ photographers who needed (and were working without) producers and for a long time I stayed away from the big commercial and film world. I found my way back in because directors I’d been working with (and valued working with) - now called Lobos - referred me to the founder of Easy Mondays, Asori Soto, who had built a very diverse roster of directors and really showed me a non toxic side to the industry.
The majority of our team is female, we are inherently a diverse company, and we all climbed to where we are through extremely hard work, not handouts. That shows in how we operate, who we work with, and the stories we work on outside of commercials.
LBB> How did you learn to be a producer?
Saskia> The irony is I never took a producing class in film school - never even crossed my mind that I would become a producer. But as many producers do, I fell into it and it turned out I was good. I was producing before I even realised I should be making money from it. Once I started charging for the service, producing became part of my survival in New York - a lot of my peers in school who remained committed to writing & directing had to move back home because they couldn’t afford to support themselves in New York.
Everyone knows we work in a fake it til you make it industry. I’m sure my producing methods when I first started were by no means adhering to AICP expectations, they were scrappy jobs so I could afford to be less experienced. And then you get put on the bigger job, and some of your workflow can carry over, some of it is pretty amateur. And then you learn that for the next one.
My mum always says she can’t believe that a producer will say yes to a job before even knowing what it is. I’ll say “yeah, they’ve booked me for this week” and she’s like “what are you doing?” and I say “dunno yet haven’t seen the brief” and she’ll be like “so you don’t know what you’ll be doing? How do you know you can do it?” and you just have to shrug your shoulders and be like well I’ll figure it out. And that unknown is a step and repeat process that you only get more and more used to as you grow.
LBB> Looking back to the beginning of your career, can you tell us about a production you were involved in where you really had to dig deep and that really helped you to grow as a producer?
Saskia> It was actually the first short film I line produced - 'Tumba Del Mar', directed by Andrew Garcia. It was a heavy one - 24 pages, six shoot days, a dozen locations, SAG talent, and shooting on 16mm film. I’d never shot in Miami and I was dealing with permits for the beach, for the airport, at least 10 different location rentals, travelling talent, and endless weeks refining the script. It was that first job where you’re like OK I’ve never done this before and we’re just gonna roll with it and do a lot of googling.
My biggest learning lesson is actually something that I try to carry into commercial shoots now - I felt so pressured to pull off this insanely dense script, that I just tried to make it all happen. I felt that’s what would make me a good producer.
And it was actually the DP, Sachi Bahra, who, once we were in Miami reviewing the shoot schedule, pointed at me and said to Andrew, “you know she’s just one person right? She doesn’t have coordinators and office PAs”, and it was Sachi who sat with me to make the script a realistic shooting script given our limitations. He helped consolidate locations, remove scenes, condense moves. And it was a big learning lesson for me, to prioritise the quality of what we got over the quantity.
LBB> A good producer should be able to produce for any medium, from film to events to digital experience. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why/why not?
Saskia> I agree with it to an extent. I believe producer instincts carry over to all areas, but that doesn’t mean it has to. A big boundary for me with producing is I will absolutely never work in event production. I’ve turned down full time producing positions that I was gunning for because they said I’d have to work event production as well. But that’s a personal choice, I’m sure if you threw me into an event production I could use my producing skills to execute it. As I said, the instinct is there.
LBB> What’s your favourite thing about production and why?
Saskia> Definitely the collaborative aspect. It’s not a lonely place, it’s very much a we’re all in it together industry.
The only time it can be alienating is with your other friends, and your family, that exist outside of the industry and maybe can’t quite understand why you’re on your phone 24/7 or taking calls on Christmas eve, or simply don’t want to be around your energy during a complicated bid.
But for my production community - we all accept it. We know it’s slightly ridiculous, we know it’s hard, we know we’re always pushing the piece to be more creative than it probably is. We all care whether we want to or not.
And to be honest, I get a kick out of the absurdity of it all. I watch commercials on TV that someone who doesn’t work in production wouldn’t think twice about, and I just KNOW what they went through - what was a pain, what was logistically difficult, where they probably had to shoot, etc.
Whether it’s commercial or film, it’s the absurdist lengths we go to for the shot. It’s like a really fun dissection. And it’s actually brought me and my partner closer together during play off seasons because I’ll watch the commercials and he watches the games.
LBB> How has production changed since you started your career? And what has stayed the same?
Saskia> There’s a strong frustration that I know everyone in production feels, which is budgets diminishing while inflation rapidly increases. On top of the budgets being at a fraction of what they were, the lack of prep time is also becoming impossible. And the ripple effect is my directors making 1 day rate to accomplish what should require three (and therefore receiving a lower fee for being faster and delivering more), as well as my line producers working 16 hour days in prep for less days and therefore less money.
You almost want to start charging double day rates but you’re at the mercy of a hundred other production companies and directors ready to jump on the shitty budget. So if you protest, you’re out.
Everyone directs commercials, and so you have to make sacrifices upfront before even bidding - we’ll do a lower production fee, we have these cheaper resources, the director will give a discount etc etc.
The competition has become insane. You might have an amazing director to put forward for a job, but they’re joining a submission list of 150 other incredible directors. And if one of those have an exact replica of what the agency has scripted, they’re in to bid. It’s sad, I have directors sending me their film & music video work all the time - such incredible work - and it’s just not gonna cut it for the commercial world.
LBB> What do you think is the key to being an effective producer - and is it something that’s innate or something that can be learned?
Saskia> Unfortunately I do think it’s innate, and that your work flow can be learned and refined.
As an EP, I know excellent producers who have the (innate) instincts, the organisation, the work ethic, but when I bring them onto one of our commercial productions I still brief them on a workflow that I, my team, and our clients, expect. And again, if it’s innate, they pick up that workflow with zero problems.
People also forget that the best producers, or at least the ones that a director wants on the job/by their side, are the creative ones.
My title is EP, and I’ve also started using the term creative producer, because I’m not a robot who takes the creative and executes it on auto pilot. I weigh in on the ideation, I have input on the treatment, I am extremely creatively collaborative with my directors, and I’d say that’s how you grow in producing. It’s also how you don’t outgrow it.
LBB> Which production project from across your career are you most proud of and why?
Saskia> The one I’m going to choose here is not a totally extravagant five day stupid budget shoot - I have other reasons for choosing it.
Last year an agency producer from Burrell asked me for the avail of a director duo that we rep - Lobos - who were very much still in their growing period. I had put them on a different Burrell production at a ridiculously low fee to do stills & iphone socials and some 16mm film, just to get their feet in the door and to get them involved in commercials.
Burrell reached out to me 6 months later to ask if they would shoot some recap videos for Puma activations for the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop, super low videography budget and definitely not a “directing” gig. But somewhere deep in the email was a mention of getting an hour with Slick Rick to record him delivering a manifesto.
My EP light bulb switched on, and I convinced Lobos to take the job and reutilise their entire fee (three days of shooting event activations with their own camera package rental) to get a good DP & G&E for the Slick Rick portion - essentially work for free for three travel jobs. I also line produced the job for free since there were no producer fees in the budget, and Easy Mondays’s production fee was also reutilised for post resources for a DC (which Lobos edited themselves).
The result was incredible - shooting Slick Rick, and an added shoot day (that was at cost) for rising basketball star and rapper Flau’jae, on 35mm film with DP Franklin Ricart, a long time friend of ours. We had two days in a tiny music studio in greenpoint and made beautiful magic on a budget of $80k.
We totally exceeded agency and client expectations for the shoot, and now Lobos have been brought on to bid as directors for a well funded shoot from Burrell, and won the job. They have a bond with the agency creative who was part of Puma, that comes from their dedication to deliver ten times more than what was expected.
When you work in commercials you forget how far so little can go when it’s good creative. We’re all just dying to be creative. And people will make big sacrifices to be part of a good idea. It’s also a reminder to never forget your scrappy side as a producer, because some of the best work comes from its limitations.
LBB> And in terms of recent work, which projects have you found to be particularly exciting or have presented particularly interesting production challenges?
Saskia> We recently produced an MLB campaign, El Béisbol Es Otra Cosa, paying homage to the historic Latino influence in baseball, and we got access to the deepest library of archival footage from MLB. That was really special. We also worked with real food truck owners in New York who totally geeked out over the spot because they’re huge fans of Marcello Hernandez (SNL comedian) who was delivering the manifesto. We shot him in the DiamondBacks stadium in Arizona.
When the spot came out, the mum of one of the food truck owners saw the spot on TV in Venezuela, and so did tonnes of her friends. She was very emotional and it really served as a reminder that commercial content can have a larger impact than just advertising a product. This was celebrating a culture. We got sent the TikTok of Las Mayores who’d posted the spot and there were thousands of comments reiterating the importance of the message and representation.
That’s a big pay off for producing a production that had many challenges, and this was a case of everyone having to give quadruple the labour, time and effort than is standard.
LBB> Producers always have the best stories. What’s the hairiest / most insane situation you’ve found yourself in and how did you work your way out of it?
Saskia> Trying to work around a hurricane as our shoot location pulled out the day clients flew in due to a state of emergency, texting my line producer about it in the same room that our directors are briefing the AD, DP, and 2nd unit DP on the location that just pulled. Dealing with an earthquake evacuation the same day one of our actors flipped on us and our clients because a small fuse blew and became extremely racist towards our Mexican service crew.
I think the most important part of dealing with hairy situations is remembering we’re making commercials and not saving lives. To first lift off the pressure we wear on our backs of pleasing clients above all else. Like, a hurricane is dangerous and we should not continue with the shoot, that’s gonna be a cost for the client but it is literally out of our control. The actor is being racist and inappropriate on set, and we have six creatives and two directors here, so let's re-board this :15 script and make it work without them in it.
There’s always a solution, but you have to be OK having transparency with your clients and asking them to work with you.
LBB> What are your personal ambitions or aspirations as a producer?
Saskia> Definitely to develop original content for our production company.
There are so many incredible low budget ideas for short form original content that we can execute and not only does it diversify what we make, it allows our directors to have total creative freedom, to show off their skills as film directors, and to expand their commercial reel (yes, everyone shoots specs).
This is a massive priority for me at Easy Mondays and it’s a big push I am heavily invested in for our directors’ portfolio and for our brand. Recently one of our Argentine directors came to Miami for a commercial shoot, and we prepped her to also execute an experimental short in the same week where we followed an alien around Miami at night.
She’d brought the concept to us months before, we developed it with her, and we did as much upfront prep so that we’d be ready to pull the trigger the next time she travelled to the states.
LBB> As a producer your brain must have a neverending "to do" list. How do you switch off? What do you do to relax?
Saskia> Cook, clean, tennis, yoga, and weed.
The first four activities fall into things that require mindless focus so they temporarily block out the never ending to do list cycle, and the weed is to help me sleep when my brain can’t shut off at night.
LBB> Producers are problem solvers. What personally fuels your curiosity and drive?
Saskia> I mean it’s just a race really - it’s like a race to the award, then it’s a race to the shoot. The problems that show up along the way are just the obstacles you have to push past to get to the finish line. So I guess the fuel is adrenaline? The drive is the end product? Because if you don’t problem solve, it doesn’t get made. So you don’t really have a choice.
LBB> What advice would you give to people who are interested in becoming a producer?
Saskia> “What’s your end goal?” I wish I had asked myself this question when I first went into producing. Because time goes extremely fast as a producer, and you can burn out quick. You’ve suddenly worked on 50 productions and you feel no sense of growth. I’m very lucky to be an EP at Easy Mondays where we embrace change, pivots, adaptations, larger goals, and we check in about it a lot.
Keep a healthy lifestyle - writing this down more to remind myself as well! Producing is relentless and suddenly you’re not eating well, you’re drinking too much coffee, maybe you’re taking Adderall, maybe (like me) you’re smoking a lot of weed to sleep at night, you’re consuming zero water, you’re travelling non stop and your nervous system is in overdrive.
I guess it’s an opportunity to become really regimented so that you’re not prioritising the job over your health. And it doesn’t help to tell yourself “I’ll get back on track with my routine when this job’s over” because there’s another one around the corner.
LBB> From your experience what are the ingredients for a successful production?
Saskia> I mean I have a list for sure - off the top it’s never underbidding the job just to win it, because overages will come and overages are a much bigger headache for the agency than they are for us and it damages the relationship.
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It’s face time with the agency/client to learn their communication style and needs - we encourage dinner before the shoot to bond and remember we’re going into this on the same team, and to talk communication flow between video village and set, because the flow of communication when you’re dealing with a video village of 10+ people all weighing in on every shot can make or break your shoot.
On the director's side it’s also about not overpromising in a treatment - treatments these days are so insanely flashy and it’s like, we actually aren’t working with the time or money to pull off 70% of these references. Better to be literal, know what you’re talking about, and surpass expectations in my opinion.
And lastly an important one at Easy Mondays - with the majority of shoots taking place offshore now and working with service companies all over the world, we work with service companies who are production partners first. Either we share directors in different territories and therefore they know us and our director, or they’re peers from the industry who we know on a personal basis. We don’t shop around different service companies with no predictability in the compatibility of our partnership.
LBB> What’s the key to a successful production-client relationship?
Saskia> Empathy. On both sides.
I have a lot of agency producers that I thrive working with because they know the call outs before I even make them, they’re protective of the production side. And it works both ways - they have clients breathing down their neck, and it’s up to me to be a good partner and avoid overages, absorb costs where I can, find a balance in saying no vs yes to new asks.
We always show up as EPs, there is never a shoot that we miss or don’t have a trusted Easy Mondays partner there as EP. Clients need someone else they can turn to on a set when the ask or struggle is bigger than what a line producer can (or should) handle.
LBB> Producers are naturally hands on - they have to be. How do you balance that in the more managerial role of an EP?
Saskia> Big sheepish smile here, because I am STILL trying to learn to let go and totally delegate. When I brief my line producers on a job I have to tell them they are responsible in ensuring I do not become a co-line producer to them, because I am extremely controlling, I know I can just do it myself, I am detail oriented on a level that most are not, and I have trust issues. And I’m protective of my directors! Of our clients too.
I check in a lot with myself just to remember the larger goal here - it’s not for me to line produce jobs, it’s for me to advance the production company as a whole and to expand our footprint, our directors’ opportunities, and our outreach. If I’m stuck producing on the ground I am actively slowing down our growth.
