RAPID COVID-19 TEST IN CHARLOTTE
I started working with director Allen Hughes and his team on the documentary series Dear Mama in the fall of 2019. We’d done a couple of key interviews in late 2019 and then the world started by changing. By the spring of 2020 we were confronted with the same challenges as every enterprise: “What do we do?” Over the winter we began hearing of various non-fiction projects that were shooting despite the pandemic, either doing the work remote or shooting everything outside. So, when the spring and summer of 2020 arrived, we geared up to conduct interviews in Charlotte, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia and in the Bay Area.
As the photos I took suggest, Covid-19 precautions were of paramount concern. We did rapid testing every morning, either at the hotel or on location, and that was always nerve racking since you never knew if you’d contracted the virus on the flight or at the hotel. In going from Charlotte to Atlanta, Allen, the producers and DP all drove down to stay in our production bubble. As you see we either did interviews outside or in large rooms were the cameras were more than six feet from our subjects. Our subjects, while fearful of catching Covid, were also anxious to tell the stories of their relationship with either Afeni Shakur, her son Tupac or both. The cognac look of the photos is very representative of the color palate of the series. You can also see by the clapper that the series was originally named Outlaw and, eventually, evolved into the more narratively appropriate Dear Mama.
One question that’s come up a lot is Allen’s relationship with Tupac, which started as young collaborators and later ended with an attack on Allen and a criminal case. As the photos suggest Allen did go on camera and was, in fact, interviewed by Digital Underground manager Atron Gregory after finishing his interview. Definitely an intense section of the doc series. This project is a worthy follow up to his HBO doc series, The Defiant Ones, about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre.
Dear Mama premieres on FX next Friday April 21 and then airs the next day on Hulu. There’s a link to the trailer at the bottom of this page.
INTERVIEWING EX BLACK PANTHER SHABA OM IN CHARLOTTE
INTERVIEWING TUPAC’S FIRST MANAGER LEILA STEINBERG IN SAN FRANCISCO
ME ON SET IN SF
INTERIEWING DIGITAL UNDERGROUND MANAGER ATRON GREGORY IN SF
ALLEN HUGHES IN MONITORS IN SF
ON LOCATION AT AFENI SHAKUR’S HOME IN NORTH CAROLINA
ALLEN HUGES BEING INTERVIEWED ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH TUPAC IN SF
SMOKING WITH ALLEN ON THE STREETS OF CHARLOTTE