As SHOOT celebrates a milestone, its 65th year of publication, we continue a recently launched series of interviews and features that will run throughout the summer on SHOOTonline and in SHOOT’s newsletters and special digital issue in which industry executives, creatives and artists reflect on the changes they’ve seen over the decades, as well as essential dynamics that have endured. These folks–from different sectors of the business–will also share their visions and aspirations for the future.
Perhaps most importantly, this special SHOOT coverage enables us to look back on the industry’s history, learn from it, and plum relevant lessons that will help us now and beyond. Mark Twain once famously said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” Twain’s insight underscores the importance of the past and its role in helping us better shape today and tomorrow.
Such perspectives are invaluable yet sadly often not properly considered as society’s tendency at times is to overlook history and its significance. Additionally, the new generation navigating our industry sometimes isn’t aware of the relevant history, having not experienced it firsthand. Hopefully helping to close those gaps will be SHOOT’s 65th Anniversary coverage which seeks to provide historical context and to benefit from its relevance to the present and what may lie ahead.
This week we connect with Bonnie Goldfarb, co-founder and executive producer of harvest films. She and director Baker Smith launched harvest in 2001. The production company has gone on to attain great heights and become an industry mainstay, garnering honors including the Grand Prix at Cannes, Gold, Silver and Bronze Cannes Lions, assorted Clios, D&AD Pencils, AICP/MoMA inductions, and New York Festival Gold, Silver and Bronze. At harvest Smith won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials.
A longtime member of the DGA as a UPM and first assistant director, Goldfarb has had an enduring impact on the industry beyond her work at harvest. She, for example, serves on the board of the California Film Commission, and is an advisory board member of Green the Bid (GTB). She’s been a champion of reducing carbon footprint and achieving sustainability in commercial production. Also a strong advocate for new talent, harvest was an early supporter of the Annual SHOOT New Directors Showcase Event at the DGA in NYC, and Goldfarb provided insightful commentary as a speaker at the event over the years.
Here are reflections and observations from Goldfarb in response to several questions posed by SHOOT:
SHOOT: How has your business model evolved over the years? What principles and beliefs have remained constant to help shape your company/agency/organization? What dynamics have changed, causing you and your company to adapt–and how have you adapted?
GOLDFARB: Our business model has evolved by learning to stay nimble and being able to quickly address the changes around us that we cannot control. We opened harvest in the spring of 2001 during a SAG strike and six months later, 9/11 occurred. These events helped us to understand that harvest was most successful when we could adapt quickly to the ever changing landscape of the world around us. Baker Smith, my business partner and I have always been aligned in our commitment to ethics, integrity and honesty. From early on, our mantra has been, “When we put our head on the pillow each night, we know we have done the best we can do and have behaved in a manner that speaks to the principles we live by.” Our business (and life) is to make things and turn the written word into visual works of art. That process is what we love and our adaptation comes from embracing new tools to tell those stories.
SHOOT: What lessons have you learned over the course of your career that remain vital to you today? What new or recent lessons have you found particularly significant?
GOLDFARB: Funny enough, I never saw myself as the cliche’d person. Growing up, cliches didn’t apply to me and then recently I’ve realized, EVERY cliche speaks to me. Thus, the lesson I’ve learned over the course of my career is to “treat people the way you want to be treated.” NOTE: This is something my father spoke about often.
SHOOT: What industry developments over the years–and/or recently–have had the greatest positive influence on you and your company, agency, organization? Whose work has had the greatest positive influence on you?
GOLDFARB: I love Apple advertising.
I love Ari Kuschnir’s AI posts on IG.
I love Lawrence O’Donnell.
SHOOT: What changes in the business do you love and why? And, what changes in the business do you dislike and why?
GOLDFARB: The changes I love in our business:
~ Women today can be directors, DPs and whatever they want
~ SUSTAINABLE shoots
~ Water stations in lieu of single use plastic
~ I no longer have to type call sheets and budgets on the IBM typewriter
The changes I dislike:
~ The continued drop in production fees and budgets (We are in a race to the bottom in the production community.)
~ Paying to present lengthy treatments and the how-to’s in bid letters and having those ideas sometimes used without getting the job
~ The growing number of crew it takes to shoot a commercial…
SHOOT: What do you look back on as among your greatest accomplishments professionally?
GOLDFARB: One of my greatest accomplishments was to open harvest in a time when there were less than five companies owned and operated by women. I am grateful to the generation of talented women in production before me who paved the way for women in our business. I’m proud of the work we produce and the awards we’ve received including the Grand Prix at Cannes, multiple Lions, Clios, D&AD pencils, AICP inductions to MoMA, etc. One of my proudest accomplishments is to watch the producers and directors I’ve mentored go on to create great work. I am also a commissioner with the California Film Commission and feel a responsibility to bring work back to California to help our crews and vendors who are struggling locally. Finally, a big shout out to GTB for honing in sustainability to include clients, agencies and production and I’m honored to sit on their advisory board.
SHOOT: What prompted you to get into the advertising/filmmaking business to begin with?
GOLDFARB: I was a DJ in Santa Barbara at a top 40 station (KIST) working nights and I was living off of the trades the station had for gas and food. The pay was so little I could not survive to pay my phone bill and rent so I moved back to L.A. with my boyfriend. We lived above the Hollywood Bowl and I needed a job. So I went to The Hollywood Reporter and found an ad for “receptionist wanted at commercial production company.” Steven Monkarsh loves to note that he hired me at Richard Goldstone Productions on Melrose “back in the day.” He then took me to The Film Consortium on Sunset with him and finally we opened an Elite Films L.A. office for Bruce Mellon and worked out of Steven’s house. That’s when he became a rep…and I continued in production.
SHOOT: What’s your fondest industry remembrance? Your most profound remembrance? Your funniest remembrance?
GOLDFARB: My fondest memory is my first job with John Romeyn and Mountain Dew. We were shooting in Florida out of Tampa on a large lake where a thoroughbred horse was towing a barefoot water skier! NOTE: Brad Pitt did all the drink shots for the spot. John provided me a horse to ride for the entire day so I could get around the lake; I remember my walkie tightly strapped to my belt. It was a great shoot day!
The profound remembrance was jumping off a waterfall at YS Falls in Jamaica during our lunch break and not jumping out far enough. Eric Saarinen and Brad Stevenson jumped before me and I thought it would be refreshing and fun. I got stuck in the vortex of the waterfall that held me down under the water. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and sucked in water to my lungs. I saw my parents and 20 Jamaican kids watching me drown and then the screen wiped white (like in the Cinerama Dome or a Volume Stage). Warmth rushed through my veins and I let go. That letting go prompted my body to surface and I coughed once and saw everyone scrambling. I sat in the van the rest of the day. Clearly, divine intervention.
The funniest memory is sitting on set with a VERY nervous client and agency and during our first take we’re all staring at the monitor and Baker Smith ran through the frame naked. Need I say more other than John Schwartzman was the DP?
SHOOT: When did you start reading SHOOT and what were you doing then? How has SHOOT been useful to you during your career?
GOLDFARB: My first interaction with SHOOT was in the 80’s when I came into work (as a receptionist) and organized the refrigerator (all drink labels had to be front and center and each drink was lined up perfectly). I then had to go to reset the pool table and on the table next to the couch, I had to make sure the latest SHOOT was there front and center. SHOOT is the only publication that covers commercial production as well as film, TV and streaming. It’s an honor to be recognized under the Best Work You May Never See and/or Spot of the Week. Those recognitions early on helped brand harvest films into an award winning company.
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Publishers note: Thank you to Bonnie Goldfarb for contributing to our series of 65th Anniversary articles which you will see over the next few months.
Here’s a fun look back at some of the content and Ads relating to our 50th & 40th Anniversaries.
>Click Here to see a feature series we published in the months leading up to our 50th Anniversary Issue which includes interviews with Lee Clow, Robert Greenberg, Bob Giraldi, Larry Bridges, Rich Silverstein, Stephen Dickstein, Phil Geier, Joe Pytka, Bryan Buckley, Joe Sedelmaier, Dan Weiden, Susan Credle, Noam Murro, Tony Granger, Kevin Roddy, Kristi VandenBosch, David Lubars, Jon Kamen, Stefan Sonnenfeld, Tom Kuntz and Lance Accord.
>Click Here to see the SHOOT 50th Anniversary Issue published in Nov. 2010.
>Click Here to see SHOOT House Ads leading up to our 40th Anniversary Issue published in Nov. 2000. A big hit at the time, they are still fun to look at. The Ads featured Cheryl Berman, Alex Bogusky, Texas East, Nitza From, Lyle Greenfield, Matt Miller, Tom Mooney, Barbara Mullins, David Perry, Joe Pytka, and Scott Ross.
>Click Here to see Industry Ads from the SHOOT 40th Anniversary Issue published in Nov. 2000
>Click Here for our special 65th Anniversary Retro Ad Rates.
