On Thursday, May 9th, TV producer and documentary filmmaker Stephen Palgon came to speak to Ms. Esmail’s 11th-grade English and journalism class. Palgon came to speak to students about documentaries he made, including one on the NFL and another on the Iran hostage crisis in the 1980s.
Palgon is an award-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker. He’s worked in TV for 25 years, starting his career working at ESPN, and has kept his career going from there. He has interviewed many athletes from former professional baseball player Derek Jeter to professional basketball player LeBron James. Palgon studied at the University of Wisconsin where he majored in creative writing.
One of the key points that he shared during his visit with students was about being collaborative. “I think being collaborative is a great process in filmmaking because ideas can come from anywhere. And you want to create a world where all ideas are welcome,” Palgon stated. He finds that being with people “without egos” is exciting and inspiring.
To create the documentaries, “America’s Game” and the “Iran Hostage Crisis,” Palgon worked with the NFL network.
“How can we come up with ideas to tell the story of the Super Bowl differently. I love going on ‘the quest’ so the quest for me was how can I find something unique,” Palgon stated. “Anyone can tell the basic story. So what I did was I kept digging and I found an article.”
Palgon explained how in order for these documentaries to come together, he had to do a lot of research. He said, “When you’re trying to find an idea one thing always leads to the next. You call one person and you never in that conversation end with just goodbye you say, ‘Okay, is there anybody else I should talk to.'”
He made it very clear to the students to never take no for an answer.
One of the students in attendance, Coby Zitron, said he learned a lot of information to use in class, as Ms. Esmail’s class is currently working on documentaries themselves.
“It was interesting and he had a lot of information that can help us with our project that we’re doing,” Zitron said.
Lastly, Ms.Esmail shared with students why she decided to invite Palgon to speak to her class, sharing “We’re working on a documentary for class and I thought ‘Why not speak to a person that has actually worked on some?'”