At the historic Ricardo Montalban Theatre in the heart of Hollywood, an audience of nearly 500 cheers wildly as a director receives the Audience Choice Award. The director, by the way, is only 24.
Such was the story of Elias G. Mael, an alumnus of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, at the Hollywood Black Film Festival premiere of “Against the Grain,” his first feature film. Mael has already achieved vast success with his directorial debut, a project he began at 22.
“Against the Grain” tells the story of Isaiah Johnson, a teenager raised in Oakland who goes through numerous life changes after he is admitted to an elite college. Aspiring to be a neurosurgeon while also attempting to embrace the new world he lives in, Isaiah encounters difficulties with his social, academic and family life that require him to make decisions about the troubling childhood he left behind and the prestigious ideal he has for his future.
Mael himself came to UCLA from Oakland, a location that greatly influences “Against the Grain” and many of his student works. Raised in a part of the town known for its financial and political instability, Mael said he mainly took reflections on people he knew and had seen from his childhood as inspiration for many of his characters, rather than directly from himself or his family.
“My objective was to capture the story of inner-city young men who are plucked from their comfort zone … and basically thrown into a new environment, like a prestigious university,” Mael said.
Mael went through the same transition when he applied to the film school in his second year with high and lofty hopes. Born with a noticeable stutter, he said he always had trouble communicating personally, but found a suitable niche in filmmaking.
“My stutter was really severe and I felt comfortable expressing myself visually and through writing,” Mael said. “It made perfect sense to go into filmmaking as a career.”
One of many scripts he had written while still a student, “Against the Grain” came to greater fruition months after his graduation. He had gained early notice among the film school’s staff and students with his shorter works, notably “Oaktown,” which won him second place at the 2009 Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards competition.
When finding a cast and crew for the film, Mael reached out to many friends, students and others he had met during his time at UCLA for his debut feature. This included Mayon Denton, a fellow alumnus who started his own production company, DRG Films, in 2002, where he mainly worked on documentaries and music videos.
“I just met him in the Wooden Center just working out or playing basketball, and we just started talking about filmmaking,” Denton said. “He came to one of my music videos to shoot. “¦ I thought he had a great attitude, very passionate about filmmaking.”
Mael hired Denton as executive producer of the project, a first experience for him, and an undertaking he shared with a majority of the crew who were doing the same. One of them, director of photography Jeanne Tyson, a fellow UCLA graduate that Mael hired for the film, explained the adventure in being with this company.
“The first time you do anything, you learn a lot,” Tyson said. “Things happen that maybe you would want to do differently in the future that you had never done before. It really opened up how to start feature films, and how you would go about taking on a feature-length film.”
The inexperience of the staff, however, did not hinder the film’s success. At the Hollywood Black Film Festival premiere in late October, “Against the Grain” not only won the Audience Choice Award, but also an honorable mention for Best Feature.
Mael said he reflected on the project as a whole, shot over the course of three weeks, with great admiration. He maintains interest in a future distribution deal and in making his next feature, which may include bringing his short, “Oaktown,” to the big screen.
“Making “˜Against the Grain’ was a very interesting experience because I feel like I had my hand in every aspect of the project from writing, directing, producing, editing,” he said. “I feel like doing all that gave me a better understanding of filmmaking and what it takes to make a feature film, so I feel like I’m better equipped to make another film.”