THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT Trump won. That’s a fact. How did he do it? INTERVENTION MEDIA PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH MAKEMAKE ENTERTAINMENT ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE A JAMES FLETCHERFILM ‘THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT’ PRODUCER TED GUARD PRODUCER KENT KUBENA EXECUTIVE CREATIVE MUSIC DIRECTOR OF PRODUCER ANGUS WALL DIRECTOR GRAHAM CLARKIN BY DOMINIC LEWIS PHOTOGRAPHY JEZ THIERRY EDITOR NOAH BENEZRA THIS FILM IS PRODUCED PRODUCED & NOT YET RATED BY EVE KORNBLUM DIRECTED BY JAMES FLETCHER © 2020 Intervention Media LLC. All rights reserved COMING SOON PUBLICITY CONTACT JIM DOBSON Indie PR [email protected] SYNOPSIS As America began to try and come to terms with the surprising (and for many voters, horrifying) results of the presidential race of 2016, the subsequent rapid-fire speed of events and jam-packed news cycles meant that nobody would ever have the opportunity to truly and properly reflect on what exactly just happened -- and how did it? THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT is British filmmaker/journalist James Fletcher’s quest for those answers. In it, he not only uncovers a detailed play-by-play from all angles on how it all went down, but also the state of America that led to the results, what the electorate was really motivated by, and how a former game show host with an elevated understanding of the media and entertainment was able to connect with voters from all walks of life and stage a takeover of Washington D.C. -- whether he meant to or not. Featuring an impressively diverse and balanced set of fascinating interviews from both sides of the aisle, Fletcher has taken what could have simply been a “Trump-bashing” film and has instead created something for a much larger audience: everyone. An educated examination of the most controversial election in modern history, and one that every future campaign - most notably the one currently in play - should study with an electron microscope. THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT is executive produced by multiple Oscar and Emmy-winner Angus Wall (Icarus, Ava DuVernay’s 13th, Netflix’s Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, etc.) ABOUT THE PRODUCTION I moved to the US in early 2015 when I met my now wife. I produced TV spots and online campaigns for David She works for CNN (Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin) and Cameron up till his election in 2010. I also did the same it was an election year. There was the added presence for Boris Johnson’s lift-of when he became Mayor of of Apprentice star Donald Trump that was throwing London. Over the same stretch of time I worked on political Washington and the media of balance. Initially dismissed campaigns in Europe, the Middle East and beyond. As TV as little more than a publicity stunt, his presence in the field producer, you have to be with the candidate all the time. You was unsettling the established expectations and outcomes. get the same access as their most trusted aides, you see all Firstly, if you asked anyone in the media or polling the polling data, and design TV campaigns to respond to organizations, which candidate was the likely winner of the the negatives, and amplify the positives. So for 2-3 years, I election - they all pointed to Hillary Clinton, and that was in was with two future Prime Ministers of the UK, which gave the context of a Republican field dominated by experienced me an understanding of how elections are won. How does serious people ready to lead. a person wanting power build their name and reputation with the public? What are the qualities that sell beyond all My own experience of politics goes back to the early 2000s others? What does an electorate tolerate? And what do they when, as a junior producer, I was at a think tank in London reject? And how would new media afect campaigns? for an event discussing how politics had fallen behind the technology curve, and what needed to be done to catch So as 2016 unfolded, and I was in the USA, and Trump’s up and reconnect with voters, especially younger voters. A numbers defied all conventions - i.e. his cardinal errors number of us spoke up and said that fundamentally it wasn’t bumped his numbers whereas for another other candidate, that difcult to catch up - but political managers needed they would have crashed to an immediate and miserable to understand the potential and seize it with enthusiasm if campaign suspension. Another world event happening they were to succeed. The following day, a staf member on the other side of the Atlantic was Brexit. My old friend of a newly elected leader of the Conservative party - David Dominic Cummings (now Chief of Staf to PM Johnson) Cameron - called me. He’d been in the room the evening asked me to make some films for his Brexit campaign. And before, and suggested that we could use the time in while I voted Remain, I’ve always treated campaigns as a Opposition, with its reduced media scrutiny, to experiment lawyer treats a client - it’s business and my own beliefs have with online media and see what impact it may have on no part to play, and never should. Our animations run any Mr Cameron’s fortunes. This was 2006. Pre-smartphone. time there is any recollection of the campaign. When Brexit Pre-Facebook. Pre-YouTube. Pre-Instagram. And at a time happened, it was permissible to say Trump might win. I when the internet did little more than deliver email and never called it for Trump, but my position was that the world news headlines. Online shopping was in its infancy and was reacting diferently and that it would be a mistake to Blackberrys were the height of technology. write of a man that can fill arenas when few voters could manage to name his opponents. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected President. All kinds of and just texted her. After some emails, she said yes… institutions, media, pundits and the rest were collectively especially as I was just interested in hearing her story. I stunned. They reacted to Trump as it if had been a natural made it clear I wasn’t planning a hostile TV-style interview. disaster. They didn’t want to understand or accept why so After filming, I downloaded the footage onto two portable many experts had missed the warnings. They talked about Glyph portable USB C drives. I’d take one, Jez kept the Hillary’s win of the popular vote, and while true, it doesn’t other. And when I could get access to fast internet, I’d put you in the The White House. You have to win the upload it to Dropbox too. And when back home in NY, I Electoral College and strategists for two hundred plus years copied footage to a Glyph 4TB master drive. have put that at the core of a winning campaign. Our editor Noah Benezra is from the mighty post production operation - Rock Paper Scissors in New York City. This is his As the dust settled, and after Trump was inaugurated, it first film and he is more than ready to be a principal editor. was clear that in government, he was going to carry on Just as we were about to start post production, the COVID with incessant media bait and attention domination… which pandemic swept the world and we were confined to our meant that the normal post mortems and period of reflection homes. So the edit started remotely, and I thinking that about the 2016 election just wasn’t going to happen. before long, we’d be able to meet in the edit room… but Journalists told me they had never had so much new data sure enough, that never happened, so I created a remote and story fodder right out of the gate. workflow. All creatives communicate via Slack - a total game-changer. We upload our cuts to Frame.io which So I thought: I’m an onlooker, I don’t have a vote, I know allows you to leave comments on the timeline, meaning very few voters nor do I belong to a US political tribe. What no more lists with timecode. Comments on Frame can if I make a documentary looking at this election? then be imported into Premiere and After Efects. Dropbox is the pillar of all file sharing and distribution. No raking I sketched out ideas. The Defiant Ones had just been through inboxes or wasting time looking for things, carefully released and I thought there was an opportunity to versioned files on Dropbox saves hours. approach politics away from the starchy treatment aimed at beltway insiders. I wanted it to be kinetic, and exciting, and As we realised that lockdown was not coming to an end diferent to other political documentaries. any time soon, we gradually added other contributors to the workflow. Some had never used Slack or Frame, and saw I went to see my great friend Jez Thierry, a British the immediate benefits. We added Graham Clarkin based in cameraman living and working in LA. He’s my age (47) rural Sufolk in the UK. He’s our Motion Graphics producer and learnt his craft from the good old days of film, and who’s worked on the Olympics, for FIFA (soccer) and other has embraced the new technologies as readily. I told him I major sports events. His work is often seen on the Graham wanted to make a film in a way that breaks the conventions Norton Show (BBC America) and countless commercials of large crews and excessive budgets.