On a tour of the Universal Studios soundstage for the film “Apollo 13,” 6-year-old Ella Franklin was blown away by the chaos of heavy fog and astronauts that seemed to burn alive. As she watched this story being made right before her eyes, she wondered how it would eventually be portrayed on screen. A desire to tell stories was born.
Now a producer and alumna of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Franklin still believes in telling stories. Her most recent work, “To The Bone,” which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January, tells the story of a child migrant farmworker who rebels against the status quo of labor oppression she is expected to accept.
“When I read the script, I knew I would do anything to be able to produce it,” said Franklin. “It just seemed like a story that needed to be told, the story of the situation of child labor.”
Franklin recalls walking past protests at Kerckhoff Hall about AB 540, a state bill that allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition to California universities, and the California Dream Act, legislation that opens up state-funded financial aid to undocumented students. These protests remained in the back of Franklin’s mind when she read the script for “To The Bone,” making her feel the need to make the film happen.
“It’s a very endearing story about a family figuring it out,” said Nikki SooHoo, a UCLA alumna and actress who has worked with Franklin in the past. “It challenged you morally but in different aspects between what you would do to protect your family, and what you would do when it looks right but the law says otherwise.”
“Ella doesn’t work on a surface level,” SooHoo said. “She loves to challenge people and make them think about things differently.”
“To The Bone” premiered at Slamdance Film Festival, a festival for innovative filmmakers created as an alternative to the well-known Sundance Film Festival. Franklin went last year, but this year marked her first time attending with her own film on the program. The film played twice to favorable critical reviews.
Almost the entire crew of “To The Bone,” including Franklin and director Erin Li, met at Film Independent, a fellowship that works to cultivate independent films and support diversity in the entertainment industry. Franklin met Li when both were accepted as fellows in Film Independent’s Project Involve, which works to aid rising filmmakers from groups that are traditionally underrepresented through one-on-one mentorship and by giving filmmakers a community with which to create collections of short films.
“I think what was great about ‘To The Bone’ (for Franklin) was getting the experience to work with other multicultural groups of people,” SooHoo said. “It’s always a challenge to all work together to find what the final product is, and I think Ella is really great at understanding the big picture of a project.”
Ellie Wen, another Project Involve fellow who worked with Franklin at UCLA, got a glimpse of Franklin’s producing style while they took a class together at Film Independent.
“I’m always really impressed by how much she knows about everything. At first I only knew her as a producer, and then I learned she’s also a director and an editor,” Wen said.
Franklin started doing music videos while still at UCLA in order to gain experience in directing since she was unable to study both producing and directing. In her spare time, Franklin still works on music videos, which she uses as a way to explore different forms of narratives, for her friends.
“You read something with a fully realized main character and the other characters are all human, and the story has all the elements that make it compelling or entertaining,” Franklin said. “There are arcs where there’s supposed to be arcs, and there’s trauma. These things that are supposed to be there that make a great script great.”
Contact Jacob Klein at jklein@media.ucla.edu.