Tell us about your organization. How big is your team? Where are you based? What is your organization’s specialty in the film and video space?
Art Simon Productions is a Los Angeles-based documentary production company specializing in emotionally driven films for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations.
For more than 30 years, I’ve focused on telling real stories that move audiences from emotion to action—helping organizations raise funds, build trust, and bring awareness to the people and causes they serve.
We intentionally stay small and nimble. Our productions typically involve a core crew of three to four people, allowing us to create an intimate environment where people feel comfortable sharing deeply personal stories while still delivering cinematic, multi-camera productions.
Our specialty isn’t simply making something look beautiful. It’s finding the human story beneath the organization’s mission and creating a connection between that person and the audience.
Why do you do what you do? Was there a transformative moment that solidified your career choice, your org’s success, or your commitment to storytelling?
I started in production in the early ’90s, but in many ways it began much earlier. I was blessed to be the son of a photographer, so I grew up with a camera in my hand. It almost felt like another limb.
In college, I was fortunate to work alongside professors producing documentaries for PBS and Discovery Channel. Before I had even finished school, I was already working on major documentary productions.
Over the years, my career took me in many directions—from working on projects with entertainment icons like Milton Berle and Tupac Shakur to music videos, commercials and productions for major brands like Walmart. I loved the craft and the experiences, but one documentary ultimately changed the direction of my career.
At the time, some of California’s largest urban school districts were struggling with severely overcrowded schools. Advancement Project California, now Catalyst California, was fighting to change a school-construction funding system that disadvantaged many of the communities with the greatest need.
Molly Munger and Steve English brought me in to tell that story from the students’ perspective. The documentary was called Invisible Kids. Our goal was to take something that could easily have been reduced to policy, statistics and funding formulas and show the human consequences through the children living it every day.
I made the documentary and moved on to my next project.
A few months later, I received a phone call telling me that the effort our film was part of had helped achieve something extraordinary: approximately $1 billion was secured for new school construction in Los Angeles and other overcrowded urban communities. Over the years, more than 100 new schools would ultimately be built in Los Angeles.
That phone call changed the trajectory of my career.
I realized that a documentary didn’t need an audience of millions to make an enormous impact. Sometimes it only needed to reach a few of the right people—people with the ability to turn emotion and understanding into action.
That realization shifted my focus from entertainment and commercial work toward impact storytelling.
Over the decades since, I’ve had the privilege of telling stories for dozens of nonprofits: helping organizations move people out of homelessness, build affordable housing, provide legal assistance to families in crisis, and even restore sight to people from infants to the elderly.
I would never take credit for all of those outcomes. A film is one piece of the extraordinary work these organizations and communities are already doing. But knowing that something I created helped bring another donor, partner or decision-maker into that mission is incredibly rewarding.
There was even a beautiful full-circle moment for me: years later, my own children benefited from the generation of new schools that came out of that effort.
Nonprofit filmmaking may not have the glamour or budgets of some of the entertainment and commercial projects I worked on earlier in my career, but the emotional paycheck is greater than anything I ever received from them.
And I receive something in return from every person I interview. Sitting across from people who have survived extraordinary hardship has taught me lessons about resilience, hope and life that I could never learn from a book.
More than 30 years later, that’s still what fuels me.
I believe storytelling has extraordinary power. We can use that power simply to entertain—or we can use it to help make the communities around us a little better. I chose the latter.
Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?
The January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades affected our entire community. More than 150,000 residents were displaced and over 17,000 structures were destroyed. In those first weeks, the fires dominated the news. But eventually the news cycle moves on, while survivors are left navigating the much longer and more complicated journey of recovery.
When we think about disaster response, we naturally think of firefighters, hospitals, FEMA, the Red Cross and emergency shelters. What we hear much less about is what happens afterward, when families have to navigate an overwhelming maze of housing, financial assistance, insurance, government programs and other resources. That’s where 211 LA’s story became so important.
The scale of the fires forced 211 LA to rapidly expand its traditional role and create new public-private partnerships. Organizations including Airbnb.org and Hilton worked with 211 LA to provide emergency housing, ultimately helping house nearly 14,000 households. 211 LA also built a care coordination program that assigned survivors personalized support to help them navigate their individual paths toward recovery. The crisis also revealed something bigger: partnerships that were created during an emergency could become a model for responding to the next disaster. That became the reason for our film.
211 LA brought us in to tell the human story behind this enormous response—not simply through statistics, but through the survivors themselves. We followed two families and intertwined their journeys with the story of the people and partnerships helping them rebuild their lives.
The film became both a window into what survivors were still experiencing and an invitation to potential corporate, nonprofit and community partners: Look at what became possible when these organizations worked together.
211 LA screened the documentary at events attended by community stakeholders and potential partners. It also became a way of recognizing the organizations that had already stepped forward and showing them the tangible impact their partnership created.
And one of the most rewarding outcomes for us is that the story didn’t end with this film. The response helped spark additional wildfire stories for 211 LA, allowing us to continue documenting survivors and the long road to recovery. The fires were the crisis. The partnerships became part of the solution. Our job was to make sure the human stories behind both were not forgotten.
Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?
One thing you learn in documentary filmmaking is that an interruption can quickly become an opportunity.
We were filming an interview with one of the fire survivors in their temporary home when, right in the middle of the shoot, a delivery truck arrived with furniture. We had to stop the interview, partially take apart our set and make room for the movers. It could have easily become a frustrating loss of valuable production time.
Instead, I thought, “This is part of their story.”
We asked the movers for permission to film, got their releases signed, and kept the cameras rolling as the furniture came into the home. What began as a major interruption suddenly became authentic move-in B-roll—and many of those shots made the final cut.
That’s one of the reasons we work with a small, nimble crew. With documentary subjects, we may only have access for a few hours, so you learn to stay flexible and capture life as it happens. You can arrive with a shot list and a plan, but sometimes the best moments are the ones you never planned for.
In documentary filmmaking, you don’t always control what walks through the door. Sometimes you just keep the cameras rolling.
What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?
The challenges were many, and they’re similar to those we face in much of our nonprofit documentary work: gaining access to the right people, building enough trust for them to share deeply personal experiences, capturing an entire journey in an interview that may last less than an hour, and sometimes having only a few hours to capture all the B-roll needed to bring that story to life.
This film was particularly challenging because the trauma was still very fresh. These families weren’t looking back at something that happened years ago—their story wasn’t over. They were still living through the aftermath of the fires and trying to rebuild their lives.
So the challenge becomes: How do you invite someone to revisit some of the most painful moments of their life without unnecessarily re-traumatizing them, while creating enough trust for them to share both their darkest moments and their victories?
After more than 30 years of interviewing people, I’ve learned that the most important tools in our toolbox aren’t the cameras, lights or microphones. They’re empathy and a good ear.
One technique I use is a pre-interview, either in person or over Zoom. I explain the process, let them know what to expect, and make sure they understand that we’re on their side. We’re not the news. By the time the cameras arrive, I’m no longer a stranger, and some of those walls have already come down.
I also remind them why their bravery in sharing matters. Their story can help bring new donors, partners and volunteers to the organization, but it can do something even more personal: reach someone going through a similar crisis who may be afraid or ashamed to ask for help, or simply doesn’t know where to turn. Seeing someone else make it through can give them permission to say, “If they can do it, maybe I can too.”
And then there’s the challenge of actually finding the film.
Documentaries don’t have actors following a script. No matter how carefully we prepare, there are countless unknowns, and much of the final story is discovered in the editing room.
For this short film, we started with more than 10 hours of interviews. There are no shortcuts to finding the heart within that much material. It takes years of experience sorting, listening and recognizing the moments that carry the story forward. Ultimately, we were able to weave two families’ journeys together into one parallel story of crisis, help, resilience and hope.
What are you most proud of about this piece? What is the most memorable response you got from this work?
What I’m most proud of is seeing what happens after the film leaves the editing room.
As we’ve screened this story at different events, I’ve watched the tears and cheers in the room, seen new partners introduced to 211 LA, and watched audiences discover the depth of the work they continue to do. Those reactions are incredibly satisfying because they remind me that the film is doing what we hoped it would do—bringing awareness, building trust, and helping sustain the organization’s work long after the news cycle has moved on.
But some of my favorite moments happen with the people whose stories we tell.
Many of the people I interview have been through incredibly difficult experiences. When they finally see their story on screen, told with dignity and care, there can be a feeling that for the first time, someone is saying: You matter. Your story matters. What you went through was not in vain.
And then something even more powerful happens. The roles begin to change.
The person who needed help becomes a mentor to someone they may never meet. Their bravery in sharing their story can become a doorway for someone who is scared to ask for help, ashamed to ask, or simply doesn’t know where to turn. Their story becomes hope for the next person.
That’s one of the things that keeps bringing me back to nonprofit storytelling.
This film was also very close to home. I live not far from the areas affected by the fires. We were under the threat of evacuation, and I had friends who lost their homes. Like so many people in Los Angeles, this wasn’t simply a story I was documenting from a distance.
The news cycle may have moved on, but the recovery has not. Organizations like 211 LA and their partners are still helping families rebuild their lives. Knowing that the story we told can continue bringing attention, partners and support to that long-term recovery is what makes me most proud.
You won a Telly Award for this piece. Why is recognition important for you, your team or your work?
Awards are never the reason we make these films, but recognition like a Gold Telly Award tells our team—and especially our nonprofit partners—that these stories can stand alongside outstanding work being produced across the industry.
This award is particularly meaningful because it is our second Gold Telly Award for work created with 211 LA, an organization we’ve partnered with for more than a decade.
For a small production company working primarily with nonprofits, that recognition matters.
It shines a larger light on organizations and people whose stories might otherwise never receive this kind of attention.
The trophy may sit on a shelf, but the real reward is knowing that the story traveled farther because people believed it was worth sharing.
Tell us what you’re up to! If there’s a new project, launch, or milestone you’d like us to celebrate with you, let us know, and we might share it with our community.
We’re continuing to partner with nonprofit organizations throughout Southern California to tell stories around housing, healthcare, legal aid, community services and other causes that directly affect people’s lives.
We’re also expanding the way these stories live beyond a single film—creating shorter social documentaries and vertical content that allow nonprofits to reach audiences throughout the year.
After more than 30 years of filmmaking, I’m still fascinated by the same challenge: How do you take one person’s story and tell it in a way that makes thousands of strangers care?
That’s the work I’m excited to keep doing.
