On Saturday, February 27, 2010, the Western AD/UPM Council’s Mentor Committee honored the ADs and UPMs of this year’s DGA award-winning and nominated projects with a special event held in the DGA’s Los Angeles Boardroom. This 7th annual event played to a packed audience of DGA UPMs and ADs who gathered to learn what goes into the making of a DGA Award-winning or nominated project.

The participating panelists were: UPM Tony Mark from Kathryn Bigelow’s DGA Award winning feature The Hurt Locker; 1st AD Josh McLaglen and 2nd AD Maria Battle Campbell of James Cameron’s DGA Award nominated feature Avatar; UPM Tony Mark, 1st AD Kaaren Ochoa and 2nd AD Susan Fiore from Bob Balaban’s Movie for Television/Mini-Series Award-nominated biopic Georgia O’Keeffe; 1st AD Richard E. Gershman and 2nd AD Carla Bowen of Jack Bender’s Dramatic Series Night Award-nominated episodes “The Incident, Parts 1 & 2” from the series Lost; and 1st AD Daniel Silverberg from Ryan Murphy’s Comedy Award-nominated pilot for the series Glee.

Following introductions by Mentor Committee Chair Randy Turrow, the DGA teams from these celebrated films and top-rated shows discussed their strategies and techniques and offered information via digital handouts on how to achieve better results for meeting production challenges. The event was moderated by 2010 Frank Capra Award recipient/Western AD/UPM Council Chair Cleve Landsberg.