Meet the production team

Zack Canepari and Drea Cooper

DIRECTORS & PRODUCERS

Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper have over a decade of experience working in a variety of mediums. In 2010, they launched the short documentary series CALIFORNIA IS A PLACE which premiered at Sundance and racked up over 10 million views online.

The success of the California series landed Zack and Drea on Filmmaker Magazine’s “Top 25 New Filmmakers to Watch List” and led them to Flint, Michigan where they made their first feature doc, T-REX about teenage boxing phenom and Olympic Gold Medalist Claressa “T-Rex” Shields. The film premiered at SXSW and went on to win audience and jury awards around the country before premiering on Independent Lens in 2015.

Their Netflix Original Documentary series, FLINT TOWN opened to critical acclaim and earned nominations from Critics Choice Awards and IDA. The series takes an unflinching look at a struggling city through the eyes of the police and community. Forbes magazine called it “One of Netflix’s best documentary offerings to date.”

Zack and Drea’s latest Netflix film, FIRE IN PARADISE was awarded both an Emmy and an Edward R. Murrow award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award.

Gary Kout

PRODUCER

With over 30 years of experience, Gary has hundreds of productions under his belt, from feature films, shorts, and documentaries to commercials, promos, music videos, events, photo shoots, and corporate communications.Gary’s commercial and corporate clients include Apple, Facebook, Chevy, TD Ameritrade, Harry & David, the Biden campaign and many more. He has produced or line produced several independent feature films, including REDWOOD HIGHWAY, MY NAME IS BRUCE, CALVIN MARSHALL, BLUE LIKE JAZZ and the award-winning documentary T-REX (San Francisco International Film Festival 2015 Audience Award Best Doc Feature; Traverse City Film Festival 2015 Roger Ebert Prize). He was Executive Producer on indie features BLACK ROAD and PHOENIX, OREGON. Gary was Production Supervisor on RANGO (Academy Awards 2011 Best Animated Feature) starring Johnny Depp, and Producer on the critically acclaimed Netflix Original Doc Series FLINT TOWN and the Netflix Original Doc FIRE IN PARADISE (Telluride Film Festival 2019, Emmy Award 2020 Best Sound, Edward R. Murrow News Documentary Award, Academy Award S 2020 shortlist). His recent work includes FELLINI FORWARD for Campari (Producer; Venice Film Festival 2021), YOU GO GIRL! (Consulting Producer; Sundance 2022), and DIAMOND HANDS with NBC News Studio (Producer; SXSW 2022).

Gary has lived and worked in New York City and Los Angeles and has shot all over the United States and in over 15 countries. He is the founder and former Executive Director of Film Southern Oregon, a professional association based in Ashland, Oregon where he now calls home and which has been named one of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Filmmaker by MovieMaker Magazine every year since 2014. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema Arts and the recipient of a 2015 Oregon Governor’s Film Advocate Award

Myles Estey

PRODUCER

Myles is a producer of the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated Cartel Land and the award-winning Showtime docuseries The Trade. His more recent producing work includes The Boy From Medellín, which premiered at TIFF 2020, 2nd Chance, with Oscar-nominated director Ramin Bahrani, which premiered at Sundance 2022 and Diamond Hands, set to premiere at SXSW 2022. With a background in boots-on-ground journalism throughout Mexico, Central America and West Africa, a strong investigative skill-set compliments his verite filmmaking experience both in the field and throughout post.

Molly OBrien

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Just before landing at NBC News Studios, Molly was the Executive Producer Special Projects & COO of Fork Films in New York City, and a founding producer of Sundance Institute’s Catalyst Initiative in Los Angeles. She is an Academy Award shortlisted and prime-time Emmy award-winning producer with over two decades of experience producing documentary series and feature films. She loves botanical gardens, chihuahuas, dance concerts and documentaries.

Erica Fink

CO-PRODUCER

Erica Fink is Director of Development for NBC News Studios, responsible for the ideation and cultivation of documentary films and series. Erica became fascinated with the WallStreetBets subreddit in the Spring of 2020, watching as users casually bet the farm and meme-ing their wins and losses. She started to get to know some of the group’s most vocal members and nine months later –when they helped send GameStop shares soaring, squeezing major hedge funds — they were very excited to share their war stories. Prior to joining the Studios team, Erica launched NBC News Now as the streaming network’s founding executive producer.

Sebastián Hernández

LEAD EDITOR

Lead editor and co-founder of Postbros, a boutique post house based in Bogotá, Colombia that specializes in Post Directing and Editorial services. Co-founder of Ruvrika, an advertising company for movies. He won the Colombian Academy award twice and his work has been seen on HBO, Netflix, Amazon, NBC, and moved on to festivals like The Berlinale, Venice and SXSW. He is a board member of TEMPO, an international federation that brings together editors from around the world.

ABOUT NBC NEWS STUDIOS

NBC News Studios is a division of NBC News that specializes in documentary storytelling. Working with Studios offers producers and filmmakers access to everything our legacy news organization has to offer: eight decades of TV and radio archive; a global network of journalists; and rich trove of stories. Our team has decades of experience in the TV and documentary worlds and has been honored with multiple Emmy, Peabody and DuPont awards. Our recent collaboration with Focus Features, Dawn Porter’s “The Way I See It,” was the highest rated non-news program in MSNBC’s 25-year history, the winner of the best documentary feature at the New York Film Critics Online award and was recently nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy.