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Andrea Haas Hubbell Documents the Charm and Challenge of Life in Connecticut.
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Andrea Haas Hubbell Documents the Charm and Challenge of Life in Connecticut. |
Why does Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Andie Haas Hubbell make her films on an old farm deep in the boondocks of Connecticut?
“Everything is here,“ Haas Hubbell enthuses. “Great locations, professional crews, and a growing film community that’s looking to develop more incentives in Connecticut - like the kind they have in New York and other film-friendly states.”
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“People want to work where they live. I know I want to work where I live, and it makes sense to me. Who wants to travel to New York every day just to be able to do the work you love to do?”
Also, continues Haas-Hubbell, “Increasingly more women directors are coming to Connecticut and finding a wonderful support system. CPTV (Connecticut Public Television) in particular, is remarkably supportive of women, and we’re developing opportunities for women in film like never before in this state.”
A really important asset of Connecticut, Haas-Hubbell maintains, is the consistent, thoughtful and thorough way production assistants are being trained in the state, providing a remarkable crew base for shooting in the state.
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In 2001, production assistant training “boot camps” were initiated in a cooperative effort between the Connecticut Film, Video and Media Office, Captured Time Productions, Bagel Fish Productions and Quinnipiac University, and have grown into a bona fide asset to the film community. The Film Office, along with various Connecticut colleges and universities, now run periodic weekend sessions where they teach the language and expectations good PA’s need to be aware of before they can efficiently work in film. Trainees are then listed on a database, which is made available to filmmakers when they come to shoot in Connecticut.
Says Haas-Hubbell; “The intensive training seminars are not just an asset to Producers trying to crew-up jobs, but also to young filmmakers - and to anyone trying to break into the business - who otherwise wouldn’t have access to professional filmmakers.”
Andie Haas Hubbell is the proverbial bundle of energy. Mother, daughter, teacher, community leader, independent filmmaker, Andie never finds herself idle. There is always something to complete, some new pinnacle to achieve.
Haas Hubbell, a Trustee of the Litchfield Historical Society, resides on a rambling farm in the Litchfield Hills, a property replete with an authentic Native teepee, neighboring cows, a cottage for her aging father and plenty of room for daughter Alex, 6, to discover herself. But don’t let the bucolic image suggest some Luddite paradise; this farm is a state of the art production center, with a latest edition Avid editing suite, and Andie is at the hub.
She and husband Harvey Hubbell V, the newly appointed Chairman of the new Connecticut Film Committee, are the principles of Captured Time, LLC, a multi-faceted production company that’s been at the heart of Connecticut filmmaking for years.
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Andie laughs recounting the night of the awards ceremony. “It was a wonderful night. A great party. All these people I’ve been working with and around for all these years, reconnecting for the first time in too long. We all look a lot older, but we’ve got that same excitement for the work.”
Haas Hubbell is no newcomer to Emmy awards, having won four previous awards for her groundbreaking documentaries THE Roots of Roe, Global Village or Global Pillage, Schools in Black and White.
It’s a grueling task Andie Haas Hubbell has chosen. Documentary filmmaking can be endless and thankless. “You’ve got to think through the topics you pursue. Then there’s the endless research to find the heart of the story. I remember when I was doing THE ROOTS OF ROE, and I began the research as part of a grant-writing project, and then it just grew. I discovered it as I went along. That’s how it is with doc filmmaking. It takes a long time to find the story. And that’s the easy part! Next comes finding the production funding. That’s the hard part.”
“But,” she continues, “When you end up with something real and fun and honest and people like it, then it’s worth it.” There is, maintains the filmmaker, a fine line that separates the true doc. “It’s okay to use different techniques to tell the story, so long as no one is misled. The bottom line is that the audience should not feel, and should not be misled.”
Andie Haas Hubbell enjoys the challenge of creating a documentary with a lighthearted approach to telling the story. As LOOP DREAMS does. Her next project, which she’ll again co-produce with her favorite partner, husband Harvey, will be a study of Dyslexia. “A lot of people in the film business, from Tom Cruise to Whoopi Goldberg, are dyslexic, and Harvey’s one of them. Estimates of up to 1 American in 7 have dyslexia - that’s a lot of movie tickets! Harvey’s documentaries have always had a comic side and he sure isn’t planning to change that with this film.”
Haas Hubbell acknowledges that they are taking on a serious challenge in starting another big project. But she contends that it’s still much easier than fiction narrative filmmaking. “When I go out to shoot, I go with one audio person and one camera person. Because the crew is small we can move quickly, and most importantly for documentary filmmaking, we can become almost invisible when we need to be.” Not like the 100-person extravaganza of a set or location shoot with actors and all the rest.
Says Andie: “Documentaries are what I do best, and I love doing them. At least that’s the way I feel until someone offers me a billion dollars to pay 100 people on a movie set.”
