Journalist-Turned-Documentarian Gives Tips for Producing 

Filmmaker Jennifer R. Lin emphasized to Emerson students her four most important tips for producing a film – finding the story, finding the crew, finding funding, and finding the audience – in Building a Producer’s Toolkit, held in the Bright Family Screening Room on February 6 as part of the 2025 Teach-In on Race.

Lin, who worked as a China correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer for 31 years, discussed her most recent project, Ten Times Better, which documents the story of George Lee, a Chinese-American ballet dancer. A screening of the film, followed by a Q&A, closed out the Teach-In Thursday evening. The Teach-In was presented in partnership with EmersonTogether.

Lin said she relied on her journalistic expertise to tell Lee’s story: She first noticed an old photograph of an Asian dancer in George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet Company production of The Nutcracker. To find out who the man was, Lin dug through ancestry records, found Lee’s naturalization papers, his mother’s obituary, his place of residence, and called every George Lee in Las Vegas until he picked up the phone. 

Answering questions from students in the audience, Lin described the two levels of producing as overseeing the project from “30,000 feet up” or being on the ground-level “making things happen”. Because she’s “not making blockbusters,” her small documentaries require a lot of ground-level production. 

Lin screened clips of Ten Times Better, as well as her first film, Beethoven in Beijing, a documentary about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 visit to China, which she co-produced with Sam Katz. While Lin knew the art of storytelling from her reporting career, she relied on Katz and her co-director Sharon Mulally to help with the filmmaking process. 

“Life lesson from a Boomer: Know what you know, know what you don’t, and don’t be afraid to ask for help,” Lin said.