We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tennille Taraszkiewicz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tennille, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Scaling a business, or process, is something that most people take for granted. Starting small to learn from your mistakes and victories will help ensure success as you grow to the next level. For filmmaking the natural growth is going from short films, or music videos, to longer form projects like a feature film. How it happened for The Film Chic (my alter ego and social media identity) was doing a variety of short films in 2019. I called it the “portfolio building project” and I was open to any genre of project that year. I also tried to work with as many filmmakers and directors to find people with similar work ethic & creative goals. By October that year we had 6 short films and 2 short documentaries. To celebrate our success, we decided to premiere them all at once which we called the “bundled premiere.” At that point we put all of the projects onto one timeline and realized we had 2 hours of content which is the equivalent of a feature film. At that moment I put it out into the universe to make a feature, and we did. We made “If I Can’t Have You” right as the country was opening up from Covid in 2020 and it was released on Amazon, Apple TV, Vudu, Tubi, and many other platforms in 2022. The process was the same for a feature film but more time/days on set, more locations, more actors, more money, etc. As growing you need to have the knowledge to organize yourself to go bigger but you also need access to the resources. I would recommend gathering a majority of your resources before starting a feature film. The last thing you want to do is run out of money without a completed project. The other factor is time needed when scaling up. You can knock out a short film in 4-8 weeks, depending on how much pre-production, a feature film on the other hand is closer to a 2-year commitment when factoring in distribution, sales, and marketing.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Growing up with a love of being in front of the camera faded as I got older. Being from a village of 800 people, Deerfield, MI, it didn’t seem realistic to have a career as a model. As I got older, I also didn’t get any height so there was no hope of the runway but when the film incentives came to Michigan in ~2010 my hopes were revived. When I saw a Facebook friend book an extra gig for an HBO show I thought “this is all me.” I was lucky enough to be booked on one large Hollywood set in Detroit before the incentives went away but that was all I needed. I was placed very close to the action and got to watch all of the behind-the-scenes interactions. Everything they were doing on the film production set I felt like I could do from my experience as an automotive production supervisor. There were no opportunities for about 6 years, so I took some acting classes until some friends from work asked me to be the lead in their short film. They didn’t have all of the details like locations & rehearsals, so I started helping with that stuff too. I got a producer credit and realized I could be a producer.
In 2017 Tennille T. Productions was formed focusing on commercials but quickly switched over to narrative. I mean, I already have a day job with a boss, and I wanted to be more creative in the fictional space. By 2019 a collective team of filmmakers created 6 short films and 2 short documentaries. Since 2020 produced three feature films (If I Can’t Have You, Chasing the Ghost, and Miss Rainbow Magic), and next to come is an 8-part comedy series called “The Agency.” All of the feature films are streaming free on Tubi.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In January of 2020 we started casting for my first feature film, If I Can’t Have You. By February we started rehearsing and then in March the pandemic hit. Within a week of shutdown, I knew I needed to push out the production. I wanted to be real and move fast before everyone else’s got moved. I didn’t want to lose key cast & crew, plus I was excited (more anxious) to get production started. I coordinated dates with another filmmaker so we wouldn’t be overlapping so crew could work both projects. Once the new dates were locked in, we needed to re-schedule everything for later in the summer. It was definitely stressful not knowing what to do and took time to re-coordinate all details. However, having the extra time was helpful to better plan out art, food services, etc. to make the overall project & experience better.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I can laugh at this now but at the time I was mortified. In August 2020 we were on set and eating lunch outside. After we were done eating, we gathered for less than a minute to take a team photo under a tree. Afterwards we put our masks back on and returned to work. Fast forward to October and we were doing an article with the Oakland Press. They asked for some on set photos, and I included the team photo under the tree. Primarily because it was the only picture I had that had most cast & crew so everyone would get a bit of credit. Unfortunately, when the article was published at a later date the Covid numbers were a bit high, and everyone was angry that we didn’t have masks on. The production was so early into the pandemic we didn’t have Covid standards yet, but we wore masks, social distanced, temp checks, ate meals outside, and had an air purifier. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I kept my team safe, nobody got covid, but I felt punished for trying to give the team credit in the newspaper. I ended up calling a PR friend and got some coaching. Needless to say, I did not participate in the Facebook argument but appreciate those who defended me. The lesson for me is to think more closely about interpretation vs. intention when sharing things with the public.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thefilmchic.com
• Instagram: thefilmchic
• Facebook: The Film Chic
• Linkedin: Tennille Taraszkiewicz
• Youtube: Tennille T. Productions