Coming Attractions: East Bay filmmakers on a roll with 'Better This

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jun 25, 2009 | by Barry Caine

I ASKED Katie Galloway how she does it all.

The Berkeley filmmaker has four boys, a 2-year-old, 4-year-old twins and an 8-year-old; she's an acting instructor in media studies at UC Berkeley; and she and her production partner Kelly Duane de la Vega -- mother of a boy, 4, and a girl, 2 -- have spent the past year crafting "Better This World," a picture that only days ago won the second annual HBO Documentary Films Fellowship.

And now they're working hard for the money to complete the project.

To me it's mind-boggling. When do they find time to eat? Do their husbands still recognize them?

"Our husbands are really supportive," says Galloway, who's married to design-build contractor Eitan Spanier. Born in San Francisco, her partner in crime's married to filmmaker Mario de la Vega, who truly understands the demands of the business.

"We work in the middle of night, at the crack of dawn, in between things when we're holding kids," says Galloway, an Oakland native who went to Oakland Tech, graduated from Berkeley High and "used to deliver the Trib on roller skakes in the early '80s."

She and de la Vega, both 38, have known each other since high school, but fell out of touch for a long time until bumping into each other at preschool. Galloway's kids were enrolled; de la Vega was looking.

They liked each other right away, and the friendship escalated when they realized both were filmmakers. Galloway's resume includes P.O.V.'s "Prison Town, U.S.A.," which took four years to make; de la Vega's documentary "Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America" was recently nominated for an Emmy.

"We complement each other," Galloway says. "We feel our skill sets are very similar, because we are really good friends and offer each other a lot of support through what is really a grueling process."

"We have more in common that most," de la Vega writes via e- mail. "Katie is "... an incredibly hard worker whose mind never stops processing and developing ideas. My creative inspiration runs out without down time. My brain demands that I completely switch gears for a spell in order to keep going."

"Better This World," their first collaboration, started shooting in January. The documentary follows the personal journeys of two childhood friends, David Mckay, 22, and Bradley Crowder, 23, who set out to prove the strength of their political convictions, and Brandon Darby, a revolutionary activist turned FBI informant.

Working in close quarters for so much of the year while trying to balance family life and other jobs at the same time can drive people to mull the sharpness of nearby knives. But when I ask how she and de la Vega handle conflicts, Galloway says, "We just started working together in January, so we're in the romantic phase, the honeymoon. It will be interesting to see how we develop; we're very careful to listen to the other person and respect each other."

The HBO award netted her and de la Vega $10,00, plus filmmaking "support and services" in L.A., including pitch meetings with industry bigwigs about distributing "Better This World." Galloway also recently was named Filmmaker in Residence at the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, netting her a $25,000 fellowship.

Now, if she and de la Vega can round up between $250,000 and $450,000 to complete their project. They want to have a rough cut ready to submit to festivals and TV stations in the next three to four months, and they have to pay for film stock, a cinematographer, audio people, an editor -- and they want to pay themselves salaries.

"We've already put in six months and gone into the hole with our own money," Galloway says.

It's good to have supportive husbands.

Reach Barry Caine at bcaine@bayareanewsgroup.com.