Saturday, October 26, 2019

Nora Unkel of Wild Obscura unleashed

Worthy Readers,

Thank you for understanding the long break between posts!
Ryan Thomas Durham our baby is just over 7 weeks old now. The greatest gift to our family, and Gods Greatest gift for Kelly and a miracle beyond miracles for me.

Ryan's birth sent me back to being a baby myself, all the memories of places, people and things from my infancy and babyhood, most memory stories filtered through the perspective of my parents.

Some of the earliest and happiest unfiltered memories come from going to visit some of my cousins on my moms side of the family, specifically for Thanksgivings. These memories, these stories of these times, were made possible by Nora Unkle.

Despite being technically a distant cousin, 
She has been a little sister to me since the first day i met her. We made so many stories using make believe, we grew our imaginations together and learned how to be storytellers changing the narratives of our branded Barbies and their accessories. To sum up most of our stories, Mostly Ken was a lazy, manipulative, greedy and otherwise nasty person. (usually the villian or henchman)

From all of this we grew phyisically apart but our love of stories, narratives, dialogue and all things fiction have propelled us into who we are today!
Nora Unkel  My cousin/sister was the wedding singer at for me and Kelly in 2016, in addition to everything else she is a killer singer!

Below is a first interview with my cousin/sister Nora. Her film company is Wild Obscura films, 





The podcast she is working on now is Cryptids 
Catch Cryptids on your podcatcher of choice from these sites:





I like to highlight eerie but seriously important work around HAlloween. There is no more important work then trying to take down the Ken figures in our lives, the people who regardless of intention smother others. 

Wild Obscura films is on a Quixotic but very crucial mission to change the Ken (men) focused narrative around women in the film industry. Enjoy the witness, wisdom and tough work of Nora Unkle. 



  1. In your own words, as we grew up together, what did we do that had the most impact to your life? what impact have I had on your life?

    1. When we spent time together as children, the thing that always connected us was stories. Whether it was barbies or computer games, we always cared about human stories and characters. We loved mythology and creating our own universes and that’s what always made me feel so close to you. When I ultimately grew up to tell stories professionally, I think I was absolutely influenced as a child by you, telling me that that was ok. 
  1. Explain your path from our Barbie stories to Wild Obscura films?

    1. After barbies came computer games, after those came written stories. You took to poetry and I took to screenwriting. Eventually that led me to NYU where I studied screenwriting and directing for film. After college, I connected back with one of my close college friends and together we made a company to tell female stories in film. 
  1. The mission of Wild Obscura films is to grow woman focus iin movies, and revolutionize the way women’s stories are td, how did this mission start?

    1. It probably honestly started when I was a young child. I always gravitated towards barbies and disney movies because those were the movies that had female heroines taking on major interesting stories. Once in school, Devin (my business partner) and I were surrounded by mostly men. They didn’t necessarily care to be telling female stories either. After school, Devin and I realized that if there was ever going to be someone to focus entirely on that, then it would be us. We want to not only help tell female stories but help female creators find their voices. With the limited amount of womxn in our industry, it’s all about bolstering those careers so that more of us can come up in the industry and not have to wade through sexist executives who don’t think women can do it. 
      Nora Unkel and Devin Shepherd, Producer and co-founder of Wild Obscura Films

  1. In your own words How did you create Wild Obscura films?? What is the backstory to Wild Obscura films?     a. Devin and I each had other day jobs of which we were majorly frustrated. We weren’t being offered the opportunities we wanted and from the looks of it, as women, weren’t going to for a long while. So we decided to start it off on our own and create a space that was not only nurturing to our careers, but for other under-represented voices as well. 
  1. Biggest influences on the creating of Wild Obscura?

    1. We started WOF before the big #metoo movement. We were mainly inspired by people like Christine Vachon at Killer Films or Abigail Disney, women who were using their voices to help support other women and female-led stories. Other influences were the NYU alum company Borderline Pictures, who we just wanted to be the female version of. 
  1. Why do you choose to create  scary movies? What inspires you to keep working through long, difficult but crucial work? 

    1. We’ve gravitated towards darker stories mainly because that’s what we like to watch. Devin has always been a huge horror fan and I’m recently new to it. But we both love dark, complex, sometimes devious female characters who don’t easily fit in a box. We found that the community of horror really lent itself well to those kinds of characters and stories. Where we could experiment and push things to the limit. For inspiration for the difficult work, we just look to the people who came before us and see how hard it was for them to get their stories made, and especially the female creators, how much even more difficult it was. We also remind ourselves often that we are young and have time. But mainly it’s the stories themselves that just don’t relent until they are made. They plague our dreams, thoughts, and nightmares until they are made. 
  1. Explain your creative process? What is different between writing and directing?

    1. As a writer, I’m very quick. I write a treatment, an outline, and then the script. The process usually also involves creating musical playlists for each script and an image mood board. I’ll often watch dozens of similar movies to get a feel for what I’m writing. For directing, it is somewhat similar. But with directing comes many more complicated pieces, particularly working with other people. As a director, you choose your cast, your crew, your locations, equipment, everything. And they all have to be real and fit within budget. For writing, you can write whatever your heart desires and no one is there to tell you that this thing can’t exist because all it needs to do is exist on the page. 
  1. What is it like to direct movies that confront layers of fears?

    1. It’s difficult for sure. But it’s also fun. Usually the scariest things for an audience to experience on a film are actually the most fun things to shoot. The more blood, gore, or fearful the subject, the more interesting the shooting process. But beyond that, emotionally, it can take a large toll. Instead of having thoughts of jokes or puppies swirling through your head every day, you have the images of miscarriage, death, and murder in there instead. I watch a lot of The Great British Baking Show to bring my head back to sorts. 
  1. What makes a story, a film or a dialogue worthy of your efforts?

    1. For us it always comes down to story and character. Is this a new way to tell a story? Is this something that I hadn’t thought of before? Is this a character that up until now has been silenced? We want it to be dark and the emotions must be real. We want a visceral reaction from our audience. 
  1. Explain your new podcast and your role making it? 

    1. Our new podcast is called Cryptids and it is a sci-fi mystery that follows two unlikely companions who go on a monster hunt to find answers in death. I produced the show while Devin directed it. It was initially brought to us as a stage play and we adapted it to the podcast format and have been making it for the past two years. It launched earlier in October and all episodes will be out by Halloween! We’re very excited to share this X-Files styled show with the world. 
      Cryptids the new genre bending way beyond eerie podcast by Wild Obscura Films

What projects are you working on? How can people support your crucial work and Wild Obscuras mission and films in general?

We have a few more feature film projects in development for our 2020 slate. Due to the great success of Cryptids, we’re also eager to develop more podcast series. I am attached as a director to a new project called Cadence which will hopefully be shooting next year. As for support, the best thing folks could do to support us is interact with us on social media, watch what content we have up, listen to the podcast(!), and if you know any great investors, let us know ;) But mainly it’s just… go out and support women artists that you know. If you know a female director has a film out, go see it. A female art exhibit, attend it. New female recording artist, go listen to her. Same goes for any gender non-conforming, LGBTQA+ artists, and artists of color! What we all need is support from audiences, proving to the white men in power that we do in fact matter and people want to hear our stories!

 Thank you for reading this blog post for more info please see the links below! And as the best scripted podcast out there ends (Cryptids) "I bid you Eyes to the Skies!"


Wild Obscura films, 





The podcast she is working on now is Cryptids 

Catch Cryptids on your podcatcher of choice from these sites:





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