How I Became A Writer for Molly of Denali

An action-adventure comedy that follows the adventures of feisty and resourceful 10-year-old Molly Mabray, an Alaska Native girl, her dog Suki, and friends Tooey and Trini on their adventures in epically beautiful Alaska.

That's the slug line for PBS Kids - Molly of Denali (MOD). To me, MOD is the first Alaskan Native lead character to be shown on national tv. Because of this show, my daughter and son will able to watch a character who looks like them and talk about their cultures on national tv. Just having MOD showing is truly special and the crazy part is... I get to tell my kids that I was a part of the show.

If you read any of my earlier blogs, one...you know my grammar isn't an A+ paper...two...you know that I just got in the game of making films. So how did someone like become a writer for a national tv show? Let's press rewind to the beginning of 2018.

Luckily, one of my cousins was a Production Assistant (PA) for WBGH (now GBH)...The company who created MOD... and she told me that they are looking for Alaskan Native Writers about two weeks before the job went public. During this time, I was still in college and I was brand new to making films and still trying to figure out how things work. With some convincing, I updated my film resume, film reel, and my latest script.

With connections of one of my professors, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I became friends with the Creative Producer of MOD on Facebook. Within the hour she posted that they were looking for writers, I applied.

With growing up in Alaska on an island...our culture is all I really knew. With learning how to make films and writing scripts... I thought I had a real chance. The only real thing is, my only real script that I wrote....wasn't child appropriate. It was a script that was based on a true story from my childhood...I might write a blog about that process later on.

Fast forward a few months... I get an email saying that I was chosen as one of the six writers. Celebrate! Now within the email it also mentioned that I was traveling to Vancouver, BC, for training in three weeks. I was hesitant on leaving my young family for a couple of weeks. My wife told me that this show can be a huge thing and that I should accept the offer.

I am going to turn this into a 3-4 part series as the training in Vancouver, BC can be a whole blog on its own.

Making My First Solo Film

I got into film because of the stories to tell, and that's a good trade to have in filmmaking. However, I wasn't the most tech savvy person in my class. I never even touched a camera until my first Ethnographic film class. Where I grew up, on Prince of Wales Island, AK, we didn't have real art classes, photography, filming - anything like that.

During my first year as a film major I enjoyed the whole process on what makes a film good and it was simple - story is king. I focused on the three act storyline and then moved onto the eight steps to make a story. With this, I thought the Canon 80D was good enough quality and doing voice over on my phone was better than the mic on the camera. Technically, I was right that it was better, but it wasn't good quality overall.

With my first couple of films, I laid heavily on others to do the technical side, while I focus on the stories. Well, that I had to change when I decided to take a documentary class and I had to make my first solo film. The concept didn't go as planned and half of the semester already passed. Some people were already done with their first class and I had to start all over.

That's when the concept of 'Voices of Our Ancestors' came to mind. With such short time, I briefly outlined on what I want from the film and written out the whole treatment before I pressed record. Again, that was my strong point. This saved me a lot of time so I didn't have to shoot a bunch of material that I wasn't planning on using.

Now, I shouldn't say that this was a total solo film, my Wife helped tremendously. She wasn't just one of the stars in the film, but she watched every single edit that I made and gave me constructive feedback. She had a lot of great ideas along the way of shooting the video and I couldn't done it without her.

With my wife's help, we won multiple awards across the globe. It solidified me that I am making the right decision of switching my career from working with kids to filmmaking.

Learning Who I Am

I was the quiet kid in the back of the class. Growing up, I sensed that there was something always missing. The summer before going to college, I was depressed. I couldn't find a reason to get out of bed. My cousin, who I was staying with, encouraged me to go. I applied two weeks before school started. With being broke, I received just enough money from our local church to buy a ferry ticket to Juneau. Without knowing if I was accepted or not, I stepped foot on the ferry.

I arrived in Juneau on a Sunday to attend the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS). The campus was empty. During that time, I looked online to see what classes to take. And there it was, an online Haida Language class. To put it simple, our class was pressing buttons and attempting to read the words out loud to yourself.

It wasn't until I went back home to speak at my uncle's funeral was when elders would ask me,

"What language are you speaking?"

When the elders put me under their wings, that's when my true love for my culture started. I ended up changed my degree from being a teacher to Anthropology emphasis on Haida History and Culture.

During my third year in college, I stumbled across an Enthnographic film class. I ended producing the Native Oratory 2011 film (you can watch the film on this website). I would skip classes and forget to eat. That's when I found my new passion, filmmaking. My ADHD mind was working on overload and it as all hands on. Mixing my two loves was the ideal situation.

It took me a few years, but I eventually attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks to pursue my degree in filmmaking. On my very first day my teacher asked me, "Why do you want to make films?"

"To help save my culture and others like me through the medium of film."