Ani Schroeter Produces "Big Personality Movies"

She produced 'This Closeness' and the upcoming 'Bunnylovr' and 'Big Break.' We discuss what unites all of them and how she works with different filmmakers.

After graduating from college, Ani Schroeter was working as the assistant to the editor-in-chief of The History Channel and Lifetime when some friends from school asked her to come down to North Carolina and AD a feature they were making called Giants Being Lonely. “I was like, ‘Screw it, I'm going to leave my job and go do this,’” Schroeter recalls. In North Carolina, she got the bug. “It was such an amazing experience. It was like fourteen to sixteen hour days. And it felt like summer camp. I was like, ‘I never want to do anything else with my life.’"

Then Schroeter returned to New York, and reality sunk in. “I was like, ‘I need a real job actually. It's not sustainable.’" She worked at IFP (now, Gotham) for a few months, and then got a job working for Alexandra Milchan and Scott Lambert, a pair of seasoned producers who had started their own company. “That was an amazing experience in terms of training,” Schroeter says. “There were four of us at the company, and they were operating as though it was a huge studio. So we had like seventy movies in development. It was really intense. But I learned a lot.”

Working for Milchin and Lambert gave Schroeter the confidence to go solo as a freelance producer in the fall of 2019. The first short film she produced, Wiggle Room, got into Sundance and was acquired by Searchlight. “It was the most successful you can be as a short film, but then COVID hit and I went on unemployment like everybody else,” Schroeter says. Towards the end of that period, as things got up and running again, Schroeter started picking up jobs, including as the lead producer on Kit Zauhar’s This Closeness; as an associate producer on Between the Temples; as a lead producer, with Roger Mancusi, on Katarina Zhu's Bunnylovr; and as a lead producer, with Graham Mason and Sarah Wilson, on Simple Town’s Big Break. This past week, just before leaving New York for the Sundance premiere of Bunnylovr, we chatted about her work on those films, her producing style, the kinds of projects she’s interested in, and making the most of small budgets.

Still from Bunnylovr, which just premiered at Sundance.

You went to college for acting. When you decided you wanted to be behind the camera rather than in front of it, was that with the thought that you wanted to produce or direct?

I really do love the idea of directing, and I did direct a short film called Yield. But one of the biggest things I love about filmmaking is putting all the pieces together.

How does that work?

I'm very much a creative producer. I receive a first draft of a script that the writer or writer-director is working on. I love that aspect of it. Having deep conversations about the script and how it develops over time. I'm not the kind of producer who's like, "This doesn't make sense. I think they would say something different here." I like to pose everything as questions. "Do you think this character would really make this decision? Based on the last twenty pages, I feel like they're a lot shyer," or something like that. I love that process.

And then I love brainstorming actor ideas. I love actors. I recognize names and faces of actors more than I do my own family. [Laughs.]

And over the years, I’ve really learned more about the intricacies of financing. I’ve been meeting people who are interested in being involved in movies financially. And then pitching your heart out on movies you love and want to make has been really interesting.

And then hiring all your friends who are talented and will jive well with the directors. I always say, "Making movies is really hard, so let's make it fun too."

Still from This Closeness.

How has your role looked different with different directors and different writers?

I think it really depends. On Bunnylovr, Roger [Mancusi] knows so many people in the industry. He was such an important person in financially putting the film together. But I have a lot of physical producing experience, getting things from A to B and making sure that HODs have everything they need and that they're supported. So we were a very good match in that way.

On the film I'm doing right now, I've worked with the line producer, Gia Rigoli, twice, and she has such a better brain in terms of the budget and deals we can get and moving things around within a budget. And I'm also working with another producer on the project, Devon Young, who comes from more of a studio background and is able to talk to agents in a different way. It's a lot of massaging, making sure people feel taken care of, locking those deals. So I think every project is different and when you build a team it's figuring out what everyone's strengths are and how you can supplement them in a way that makes the process easy. Does that answer your question?

Sort of. I think what I'm really asking is about the creative side: How does the collaborative process look different on Bunnylovr versus the Simple Town movie versus This Closeness?

It really varies on the kinds of filmmakers that they are. All four of the movies I've been lead producer on were first time filmmakers -- except for Kit [Zauhar] actually. Some directors are a lot more hands off and some are more particular. With both Kit and Kat [Zhu], they're starring in the films, so in both those situations I was behind the monitor the entire time. After every take it was like, "Ani, did we get that?" And I was giving my notes.

With Simple Town it was really interesting because there are five of them, and they're all negotiating together whether they got it or they didn't get it. In that case, I was more hands off creatively and more giving them the resources to get their job done. Last night, we watched the first thirty minutes of the movie that Caro [Yost] and Sam [Lanier] cut, and I think it comes back to the creative producing side where I'm giving notes. But directly on set, it's just being the support system.

And then with this next movie, it's a couple. They co-wrote it, they're co-directing, and I have no idea what it's going to be like on set. But I think our process of getting the movie up and running has been very collaborative. Although when it's a couple working together, when they come to me, they've already been talking about the movie for six hours. So it's very different than when you're working with one director and it's you and them the entire time.

Still from Between the Temples.

On set, how much are you looking at the monitor and being a resource to the director and how much are you making sure that the ship is running smoothly in all the other different ways that it needs to?