The Making of WHIPLASH

ABOUT THE EVENT:

Join PROOF Film Festival and The Black List for a special conversation with producer and executive Couper Samuelson, all about the making of the award-winning hit film WHIPLASH. From a short film, to a Black List script, to an Academy award winning film, this journey is a testament to what PROOF Film Festival is all about.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR:

Franklin Leonard

Franklin Leonard is a film and television producer, cultural commentator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the Black List, a company dedicated to identifying and supporting remarkable screenwriting and fiction through its annual survey of Hollywood’s most liked screenplays and its online marketplace for screenplays, television pilots, theatrical plays, and novels. To date, more than 400 scripts from the Black List’s annual survey have been produced as feature films, resulting in more than $30B in global box office and 300 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins, including four Best Pictures and nearly half of the screenwriting Oscars awarded since 2007. Leonard has worked in feature film development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Sydney Pollack & Anthony Minghella, and Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s been a juror at the Sundance, Toronto, and Mumbai film festivals and one of Hollywood Reporter’s ’35 Under 35′, Black Enterprise magazine’s “40 Emerging Leaders for Our Future”, and Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.” In 2019, the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAe) presented him with the Evelyn Burkey award for elevating the honor and dignity of screenwriters. Leonard is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and served as an advisor for the 2022 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Exhibition “In America.” He is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the Executives branch of the Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). His TED talk – How I Accidentally Changed the Way Movies Get Made – has been viewed more than 1.75 million times.

ABOUT THE PANELIST:

Couper Samuelson

Couper Samuelson is the President of Feature Films at Blumhouse and is responsible for all of the company’s film output, including the recent franchise-launching hits M3GAN and THE BLACK PHONE.

Blumhouse is known for pioneering a new model of studio filmmaking: producing high-quality micro-budget films. The company has produced the highly profitable THE PURGE, INSIDIOUS, SINISTER and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchises, which together have grossed more than $1.6 billion at the global box office.  The fifth INSIDIOUS film was released through Sony Pictures this summer and became the highest-grossing installment.

Samuelson joined the company in 2011 at the onset of its first-look deal with Universal and since has overseen a slate of over 60 films. He helped launch Blumhouse’s successful low-budget model, building a slate that included the least expensive and often most profitable films at various studios.

In his first year working for Blumhouse, Samuelson incubated WHIPLASH by producing a short film that would propel the subsequent feature to be the lowest-budgeted movie in Hollywood history to win three Academy Awards. In addition, he sourced and shepherded both the critically acclaimed thriller THE GIFT which was the directorial debut of Joel Edgerton, and the Academy award-winning Jordan Peele film GET OUT.

ABOUT THE FILM:

“Whiplash,” 2013, Dir. Damien Chazelle, 18 Min, Sony Pictures Classics, USA

A ferocious, bullying music teacher teaches a dedicated student.

FORMAT: DCP