Company founder Raymond Lawrence Sullivan grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area but has spent the majority of the last 30+ years living in Asia. After working in business and finance for over a decade, he made a mid-career shift towards filmmaking and hasn’t looked back. Fluent in four languages, he began his creative career as a screenwriter in China, and his first three feature film scripts - written in Chinese - were either optioned or sold.
Sullivan’s next goal was to develop a story that would transcend the Chinese market and play for a global audience, one that he would not only write but direct. Through friends, he met producer-filmmaker Brendan Davis when Davis first visited Beijing in 2013. With a long background working in independent film, and fresh off of producing the first US-based season of long-running Chinese TV hit “Jia Pian You Yue” in Hollywood for CCTV-6, Davis was in China to meet with partners on a feature film they were developing. Coming from very different backgrounds, Sullivan and Davis soon found common ground as expats in China, with shared tastes in movies and music driving their friendship. They remained in touch and frequently consulted on Sullivan’s creative projects as Davis went back and forth from the US to China over the next several years.
Cut to 2018. Sullivan had moved back to Palo Alto and Davis was now based full time in Beijing when they began developing a project together that Sullivan had nurtured for several years called My Favorite Season. Set in the world of Paris Fashion, and featuring strong European as well as Chinese characters, Sullivan had worked obsessively on the story and script with Davis and others through several incarnations, and it was now time to take the next step - producing it.
Davis’ priority was to surround himself and Sullivan with collaborators who would be force-multipliers and enhance their chances of success. The first addition was rising cinematographer and producer Naeem Seirafi, whom Davis had known well in Los Angeles. Seirafi’s contributions extended far beyond the creative, with his own experience and acumen working across borders and bridging cultures bringing great value to the team. Longtime executive and entrepreneur Jonathan Garrison joined the team as well, to help guide and oversee the financial aspects of the project. In 2019 a proof-of-concept short film was produced in Los Angeles and a development trip to Paris during Fashion Week was undertaken. French producer Xavier Roy and his company Froggie Production were hired to lead the Paris-based scouting activities and to create and perfect the budget and schedule with the team, while co-producer Tammy Tian helped to further refine the Chinese aspects of the story from Beijing, with an emphasis on making sure that the female lead Feifei was as authentic and relatable as possible.
Project development and financing proceeded well throughout 2019, and the film was on track to shoot in Paris in 2020 when the global coronavirus pandemic shut down the world. The team regrouped and reconfigured their plans several times throughout the ensuing years, further refining the script and creative along the way. During this time, they also began working on a long form documentary project called Mao/Nixon, examining the historic diplomatic triumph that first paved the way for the opening of China to the West and led to the global order that we find ourselves living in today. Additional projects are being developed by the team as they prepare for the start of production for My Favorite Season, now slated for 2024, all of which embody the globally-minded ethos of the Company and its partners and colleagues.