Disney has selected the second class of underrepresented filmmakers for its ‘Launchpad’ program. Their live-action shorts debut in 2023.
Disney Plus has announced the films and filmmakers for Disney Studios Content’s second season of “Launchpad,” a collection of live-action short films. Selected out of almost 2000 applicants, all from underrepresented backgrounds, the lineup of filmmakers features six writers (Jasmine Johnson, Kevin Park, W.A.W. Parker, Xavier Stiles and the married screenwriting team Joel Perez and Adrian Ferbeyre), five directors (Alexander Bocchieri, Erica Eng, Spencer Glover, Cashmere Jasmine and Gabriela Ortega), and one director/writer (Niki Ang). Their six short films, based on the theme “connection” will debut on the streaming service in 2023. After last year’s successful debut of the pipeline program, the Disney team aimed to up the ante with year two. According to Disney senior manager, Phillip Domfeh, who runs the initiative’s second season, tells Variety that the team asked themselves, “How do we grow and expand impact? And how do we continue to take our program to the next level?” Thus new to the pipeline program is the writing track, which allowed both directors and writers to apply, where the first season was geared solely toward multi-hyphenate filmmakers. “One of the very obvious opportunities was to bring writers into the program,” Domfeh explains. “They’re really, really important in this business and often overlooked, and we have a belief that diversity begins on the page before it happens on the camera.” This meant that the filmmakers applied separately, sending in their writing and directing samples to the Disney team for review before they were paired with another writer or director. Domfeh and the Disney team began their selection process by analyzing the scripts. “Let’s identify the stories we’re most passionate about, the stories that resonate with us, the stories that we feel like we haven’t seen,” he recounts. “And then let’s find the right directors to bring those to life.” From there, the team hoped for a “little bit of magic” when finding the righting pairings. “There is a je ne sais quoi to filmmaking, and you see a short film that someone made and then you see a script,” Domfeh begins. “For example, we have one director, Gabrielle Ortega, whose sample was more on the horror side of film, kind of surrealist versus this script in ‘Beautiful, Fl.’ that had these very dynamic and heightened elements — like I know it seems weird, but we think that these two would actually really, really vibe. He adds: “The vision is always seeking authenticity, never trying to pigeonhole a storyteller or say that this is the only type of thing that they can bring to bear, but trying to bring to bear what we have in front of us in the truest way possible.” The Launchpad team then introduced the filmmakers to each other via email.”When everyone connected, I breathed a sigh of relief,” Domfeh admits. “Everyone raves about the filmmakers that they’re working with, so we got it right.” Like Launchpad season one, the program has already been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic; after the filmmakers were notified that they’d been selected in December, they were welcomed into a virtual orientation instead of meeting in person.
