An Interview with Tiffany Shlain - shlain-3

At UC Berkeley, Tiffany began her career by pasting together old movies by hand. Whenever she ran out of money, she would work in technology to fund her next project. Her passion, drive, and hard work are what have made her a wildly successful filmmaker. She began to find a vision and concept, which would continue to shape her life’s work. “I wanted to use the power of movies to make social change,” said Tiffany.

View the trailer for The Science of Character
View the trailer for The Science of Character

Today, Tiffany makes films that change lives. It’s hard to categorize her films, because they are all so different. “My style is very unusual, and it doesn’t fit easily into boxes.” she says. One of her biggest movies is Connected, an autobiography, which she said was the hardest movie she has made yet because it was about her own life. Connected was chosen by the US state department to represent America at embassies around the world for their 2012 American film showcase.

Like her current film, she prefers making short, inspiring movies, instead of long, feature-length films. She says, “More people have time to watch a brief film.” She also creates a type of movie production called “Cloud Films.” She invites people from all over the world to send in videos of themselves, and she puts them into one movie. “I like using the power of the web to make social change,” Tiffany said. “All these new ways to make stories, I hope, will remind people all over the world that we’re all connected.”

Tiffany loves making her movies. “I get excited to wake up everyday. I feel like a lot of hard work has led to this moment,” she said. “I feel very lucky.” In order to become a successful movie producer, you need to have experience and internships are extremely valuable. She believes that it’s important to have knowledge in film, and to learn more about movie making. Even though you might fail in the business of film, you have to keep going.

In the future, Tiffany hopes that with the Internet anyone and everyone who wants to will be able to do film and have some experience with it. “I hope for my films to expose people to be more empathetic, and remind people how connected we are.”