The Production Crew
Writer-Director Mal Karman won a National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy) Award, the Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward Scott Newman Award and a Silver Medal at the New York International Film Festival for the script of “Wasted: A True Story,” a prime-time TV special on drug abuse that received a laudatory editorial from the Washington Post. He has worked numerous times as a script doctor for Oscar-winning producer Saul Zaentz (including “Three Warriors” “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” and “D.O.A.”), penned the sequel to the animated “Lord of the Rings,” and co-wrote "Shooting Stars" in Paris with Oscar-winning screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere. At the New Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Karman directed his comic drama, “The Bones of Simon Bottle,” which ran for eight weeks, and for which he was awarded a Marin Arts Council playwriting grant. As a book author, he wrote the political thriller “The Foxbat Spiral” (now in its second printing), the nonfiction “The Poison River” and — with 21 friends — the international bestselling satire “Naked Came the Stranger.” He is one of the featured writers in the just-released anthology “Encounters With the Middle East.” Karman has also worked for directors Francis Ford Coppola, Ralph Bakshi, Keith Merrill, John Boorman and Hector Babenco, producer Don Ringe, and for political analyst, TV commentator and author Bill Moyers. He traveled to Iran to research a new novel and to shoot footage for a documentary and directed and edited the documentaries, “Volleyball Nations” and “Heaven in the Headlands,” the latter for the Yosemite National Institutes. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Media Workers Guild of Northern California and the Authors Guild.
Producer-Unit Production Manager Lope Yap Jr. has worked in the motion picture industry since 1971, overseeing complicated and demanding productions for both live action and special effects films. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and is a producer, unit production manager, first assistant director, location manager and visual effects producer. Among his credits are “Just Like Heaven,” “40 Days and 40 Nights,” “Titanic,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” “Farmer and Chase,” “The Telephone,” “Monster in the Closet,” “More American Graffiti,” “Farewell to Manzanar,” “Shoot the Moon” and “The Hunt for Red October.” He has worked with Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Hartnett, Ben Gazzara, Albert Finney, Diane Keaton, Sean Connery and Whoopi Goldberg. Lope's experience also includes specialty films, IMAX large format films, corporate industrials, music videos, movies for TV, episodic TV including “The Chris Isaak Show” and “Beverly Hills 90210,” short films and more than 1,000 commercials. He won a Telly Bronze Award for a juvenile diabetes public service announcement and was production manager-assistant director on the 1997 Oscar-nominated documentary IMAX film “Special Effects — Anything Can Happen.”
Cinematographer Robert Primes, ASC has been a Hollywood-based Director of Photography since 1975. In 2008 he was awarded the President’s lifetime achievement award from the Society of Camera Operators. His feature credits include Baadasssss! with Mario van Peebles, Bird on a Wire with Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn, The Hard Way with James Woods and Michael J. Fox, Money Talks with Charlie Sheen and Chris Tucker, A Murder of Crows with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Aspen Extreme. His cinematography has won Emmys for My Antonia and Felicity and the American Society of Cinematographers award for the series MDs, the first major cinematography award given to a digitally photographed show. He directed the first progressive scan HD production ever made, photographing his pianist wife Theodora Primes with an exotic array of high tech gadgetry.
Producer-Production Manager Ned Kopp has worked in the movie business for more than four decades with directors Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Phil Kaufman and John Korty, among others. Topping his credits are some of the biggest hits and artistic triumphs of the American cinema including “The Godfather,” “American Graffiti,” “The Black Stallion,” and “Birdy.” Other distinguished work includes Stephen King’s “Storm of the Century,” “THX-1138,” “Foxes,” “The Fast and the Furious,” and “The Right Stuff.” He also has nearly 2,000 commercials to his credit. Some of the well-known actors Ned has worked with are Nicolas Cage, Kathy Baker, Veronica Cartwright, Karen Allen, Joe Don Baker, Candy Clark, Sandy Baron, Jacqueline Bisset, Robin Williams, Timothy Dalton, Blythe Danner and Cameron Diaz.
Producer G. Allen Johnson has written, produced and directed independent films including the independent feature "The Waiter" and the short "Learning to Fly,” screened at the recent Asian American Film Festival in San Francisco. Educated in Film Studies and English at Indiana University, Johnson is a film critic and film writer on staff at the San Francisco Chronicle. He has also been a film writer for the San Francisco Examiner and the Pasadena Star-News and has contributed to several publications and online media as a freelance writer on independent film.
Supervising film editor Laurel Ladevich began work as an assistant editor for George Lucas in 1978 on feature films such as "More American Graffiti," "The Empire Strikes Back," "Return of the Jedi," and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," "Cocoon," and "Jurassic Park." She has edited numerous television movies, documentaries and independent features and co-produced the Academy-Award nominated short documentary "Special Effects." She produced, wrote and directed “Fly Girls," for The American Experience/WGBH Emmy winning season and started the film/video program at Marin School of the Arts. She enjoys working with and mentoring her former students.
Casting Director Nina Henninger has been a casting agent for almost two decades and has worked on innumerable films and television shows including “The Kite Runner,””Milk,” “Rocket Science,” “The Pursuit of Happyness,” “Spanglish,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Jack,” ”Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Angels in the Outfield,” “The Doors,” and the TV series “Nash Bridges.” She is CEO of her own agency, Nina Henninger Casting, placing talent for movies, shows, original features, commercials, TV programs, print work, fashion shows, runway, etc. Among her clients are New Line Cinema, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Cloud Ten Pictures, MGM, Miramax Films, Dreamworks Studios, Buena Vista, Lion's Gate Films, Fox Searchlight, MTV Network, Nickelodeon, USA Films, Touchstone Pictures, Talent Search USA, HBO, Gramercy, UA Films, Castle Rock Entertainment and ESPN. Nina has been casting agent for directors Spike Lee, Marc Forster, Gus Van Sant, Ben Stiller, Rob Marshall and James L. Brooks. She is also a member of the Casting Society of America (CSA).
