As Hollywood struggles with diversity, a production company based in Lincoln Heights has taken aggressive steps to make sure future filmmakers reflect the diversity in the moviegoing audience.
The company in Lincoln Heights has partnered with LA Mayor Eric Garcetti and a very famous Hollywood couple.
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have partnered with the mayor to make sure underrepresented communities get an equal shot at working in the industry.
Garcetti visited a company in Lincoln Heights to talk to the future filmmakers. He spoke with what he hopes is Hollywood's future.
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
The program is called Group Effort Initiative or GEI — to create opportunities for people like Chelsea Rene.
"It's amazing honestly, it's like a full circle moment," Rene said.
Rene got to show the mayor the project she's working on for the upcoming film "On The Come Up," actor Sanaa Lathan's first effort as a director. Rene dreamed of working in Hollywood while growing up in Hawthorne and attending Grambling University.
GEI gave her the shot she might not have had.
"In LA there is a lot of opportunity but sometimes kids don't have the connections to get there," Rene said.
Providing those connections is the production company Narrator, based in Lincoln Heights and run by Tina Carter and her husband Josh, which produces trailers for films like "Matrix Resurrections." As they saw Hollywood struggle with diversity, they realized their company could do something about it.
"I have three kids and I want to have a company that looks like LA," Carter said.
The long term goal is get trainees from the editing suite to the executive suite, to make the big decisions that can make dreams come true.
"This allows them to know somebody in the industry but also to train in the industry," Garcetti said.
The executive director of GEI says Hollywood has made significant progress in its diversity efforts but one area still lacking is Latino representation for a city that is half Latino.
"I say to anyone who wants to get into the industry to just keep going , just keep trying everything," Rene said.
