Roger Brown

Roger was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. A high school counselor advised him to develop his sense of wonder and expand his horizons beyond New Orleans. He took that advice and has never looked back. Within months of that fateful meeting he left the South to attend Northwestern University's highly regarded School of Speech on a full scholarship. There he studied film, art, anthropology, and linguistics, graduating in 1975 with a degree in Film.

More importantly, there he fell in love with sailing.

He next developed his practical filmmaking skills at The Altschul Group, a Chicago based corporate and educational film house. He produced corporate films and multi-screen slideshows for companies like Miller Brewing, IMC, JI Case, American Cyanamid’s Ag Division, and AO Smith Harvestore. In 1984, after a three-month trip to Europe, he formed Trillium Productions. Since then he has continued to travel the world producing programs. One of his first clients was Ducks Unlimited.That film led directly to a fifteen-year relationship with National Geographic. Which led to projects for Discovery Channel and The Field Museum of Natural History.

In 1987 he joined forces with producer/director Gaylon Emerzian. Business boomed. Five years later they married. Now they live and work together in a large, art-filled, Victorian house in Evanston IL.

Roger is able to communicate difficult concepts in clear ways, and to communicate critical ideas across cultures.

With an improving proficiency in Spanish, he has been working more and more in Latin America, creating programs for and about Spanish-speaking audiences. These include videos for kids for the Arecibo Observatory and the Mayagüez Zoo in Puerto Rico. He also just finished working in Peru on a documentary seen on PBS.

Gaylon Emerzian

On her first birthday, in keeping with a family tradition, Gaylon's grandmother laid out several objects in front of her, each symbolizing a potential path in life. The objects were a dollar bill, a pair of scissors, a Bible, and a shot glass. Bypassing a life of wealth, drunkenness or religious piety, Gaylon reached for the scissors and her family pronounced her a future tailor. Little did they know that she would be cutting film and not cloth.

A native Chicagoan, Gaylon Emerzian has always believed the city, with its architecture and history, is a powerful place to make media. She engages in every aspect of the filmmaking process and utilizes her passion, inventiveness and resourcefulness to constantly challenge herself as a producer.

An Emmy award-winning editor and multiple award-winning writer/director, she has done work for National Geographic, A&E, the History Channel, and the Field Museum of Natural History to name a few.

Gaylon is constantly pushing the envelope, finding new ways to express her creativity. Early on, she recognized the potential in video for web programming. The leap of faith paid off when the webcast she created, Spatulatta.com, received the James Beard Award—the culinary equivalent of the Academy Awards. In fact, her projects have received four James Beard Award nominations in five years.

She has melded her media making career with organizing and social activism: co-founding Women in the Director's Chair Film Festival and serving as president of the board of directors of Chicago Filmmakers.

Over the years, she has been the guiding light on scores of industrial, educational and promotional projects. She joined forces with producer Roger Brown in 1987 when she became a director for Trillium Productions.

Five years, and many arguments later, they married.

Read Gaylon's Blog: A Pinch of Reasoning