We were lucky to catch up with Fabiola Stevenson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi FABIOLA, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
The short film “Ofelia”
In 2017, the studio I was directing English dubbing at, asked me to participate on the 48 Hour Film Festival. They had entered 3 years in a row and hadn’t had luck. They wanted me to direct a short film for the contest.
I’m a dubbing director, and directing a film as short as it maybe is not something I was familiar with or felt comfortable doing.
The producer literally begged me for months, and I kept refusing, she insisted that I had the sensibility to direct it even if I had only directed voice work.
Since I had no intention of doing it, I thought I’d mention to them that my mom was an internationally famous actress and she happened to live here in Los Angeles with me. They were thrilled and far from accepting my refusal, they insisted even more!
I mentioned it to my mom and she was excited to be a part of it, and more if I directed her. So I ended up accepting.
We had all the volunteer actors and crew lined up, and when the time came to select a genre, we got ROMANCE and the rest of the rules (hopefully you are familiar with this contest, if not I’ll explain later).
We then realized that we didn’t have anyone old enough to play my moms love interest, so I phoned my dad (who NEVER wanted to be on screen, even home videos) and explained the situation. He didn’t hesitate one second and said “yes, of couse I’ll do it, for you I’ll do anything”!
So… the process started, on a Friday the producer and I began brain storming with the writers, who wrote it overnight, we called it Ofelia, because it was my mom’s middle name, then everyone showed up at my house at 8 am the next morning and the magic began!
It was out of this world, we all cried, ALL day long! We finished the shoot almost at midnight. I slept until 2 am, then went to the studio to edit, color correct, do some foley, English Subs, and we had two brilliant Brazilian guys write original music, that once added to the movie became pure magic! We turned it in Sunday at 4 pm, less than 48 hrs.
We were competing against 132 short films that year. It was screened several times. And each time we were on the top 10. We made it to the top 20 that were screened at the Chinese Theater. There we received 18 nominations, and ended up winning 8 of those:
Best Film 1st Place
Audience Award
Best Actress – Beatriz Aguirre
Best Musical Score – Alexandre Jannuzzi & Alberto Menezes
Best Use of Line
Best Use of Prop
Best Writing – Jorge Durán and Camille Bacos
Woman Filmmaker of the Year, Sponsored by Women in Film Org Silvia Epure
Best Directing Fabiola Stevenson
Having won Best of LA out of the original 132, we went to the Filmapalooza Festival in Paris, France representing LA.
Since then, it has gone on to win over 30 Film Festivals Worldwide!!!!
Directing my parents on this film has been, in my eyes, the greatest accomplishment and gift of my life!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Well, today it is rare to find someone who’s career and experience has such a great variety of projects, this flexibility allows me to be a director, actress, producer, sing a little bit, and translate for both the English and Spanish markets.
I was born in Mexico City and arrived to the US in 1986. I had a very interesting and unique childhood, having a very famous mother who was in movies, soap operas, theater, etc, who couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized, a very well known father, Carlos Stevenson, (AKA Guillermo Romano) whose amazing voice in Spanish was that of Adam West in “Batman”, Peter Graves, in “Mission Impossible”, amongst others, and a brother, whose voice was that of Michael J. Fox!!!
Growing up around that, left me no option but to become a “child actress”, starting my career doing voice overs at the tender age of 9. Lending my voice to the character of Violet in “Charlie Brown”.
I’ve also lent my voice to:
Firestar in “The Adventures of the Amazing Spiderman”
Jem, in “Jem”
Olive Oil in “Popeye”
Jo (Nancy McKeon) “The Facts of Life”
Diana in “Dungeons and Dragons”
Kim Basinger “The Marrying Man”
Sharon Stone “Scissors” & “Jean Harlow documentary”
Kat (Annabeth Gish) “Mystic PIzza”
Disney’s “James and the Giant Peach” singing for Ladybug
Several documentaries and industrial narrations
Over 30 audiobooks
Doona Bae, on Netflix’s “Stranger”
Diane, Ana Spanakopita and Vanessa Geko on Netflix’s “Bojack Horseman”
Bella (Kristen Stewart) on the Twilight saga
Kate Winslet on Insurgent & Diverget
Melanie Laurent, on “Now You See Me”, to name a few…
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I would say that the most rewarding aspect of any profession is that you are doing what you LOVE, in mine I have the freedom to create characters, specially on audiobooks, breath life into them! I love being a voice actress, narrating audiobooks, and directing. It’s my passion, and I’m so grateful to have been able to do it for so long!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
At some point during my VO career, things were slow, so I started working as a Production Coordinator in one of the dubbing studios I was working at as an actress, here in Los Angeles.
Then I moved back to Mexico City to have a go as a singer, but soon learned that if you are not sitting on someone’s lap or doing “special favors”, it doesn’t matter how good you are, you won’t get far… so I gave up on that, sadly, but right as I was getting ready to come back to LA, I was offered the position of Creative Manager for Disney Character Voices, México, so I stayed and had the opportunity to work and amazing projects like, Hercules, Lady and The Tramp, James and the Giant Peach, and Toy Story 2, among others, all Latin American Spanish Versions.
For some reason, I wasn’t happy in Mexico, so decided to come back to LA, and got another amazing job as Dialogue Recording Supervisor at Dreamworks International Productions, where once again I got to work on amazing titles, but this time in territory, this meant traveling nonstop! Some of the titles I supervised were: –
“MOUSE HUNT” LAS VERSION (ADR & MIX)
– “AMISTAD” THAI VERSION (ADR & MIX)
– “DEEP IMPACT” CASTILIAN VERSION (ADR & MIX)
– “PRINCE OF EGYPT” LAS, CASTILIAN, SLOVAKIAN, CZECH, NORWEGIAN AND BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE VERSIONS (ADR & MIX)
– “ANTZ” CASTILIAN VERSION (ADR & MIX)
Once traveling became exhausting, I was very fortunate to get the position of Manager International Dubbing, at Sony Pictures Entertainment, where I was in charge of overseeing the dubbing process of all series and features for Latin America, Canadian French, Asia and foreign language features dubbed into English.
I also supervised the Final Mix for “Willow” and “Clone Wars” at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch
Having had the opportunity to work on “the other side” of the business gave me a unique perspective of how the clients deal with dubbing studios and talent.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://fabiolastevenson.com/Fabiola_Stevenson/Welcome.html
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fabiolastevensonvo/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/fabiolastevensonactriz
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabiolastevenson/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@fabiolastevenson8489
Image Credits
Main headshot by Alberto Santillán