What does it really take to go from church mime and $5 dance classes in St. Louis to choreographing for the Grammys, BET Awards, and artists like Latto, Cardi B, and Lil Baby?

On this episode of Call Sheet Confessions, Mia sits down with creative director, choreographer, producer, and educator Jeremy Green – founder of Behind The Movement (BTM) and creator of the powerful live production Dear Black Boy.

Jeremy opens up about:

Growing up in St. Louis and falling in love with dance after watching Janet Jackson’s Velvet Rope tour
Failing his first professional dance class and why passion kept him going
Moving to Nashville and Atlanta with almost nothing, interning at Dance 411, and starting out homeless
Working as an assistant in the agency world and how understanding the business changed everything
How Behind The Movement went from a small showcase raising money for kids to a full week-long professional intensive
The heart and healing behind Dear Black Boy, and why telling Black men’s stories on stage is so important
The real qualifications that get dancers rehired (hint: it’s not just talent)
Why he prefers live stage, loves auditions, and believes work ethic beats talent every time
His advice for aspiring dancers, choreographers, creative directors, and program founders
If you’re serious about a career in dance – or you care about purpose, mentorship, and building something that outlives you – this episode is for you.

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Paul Becker didn’t grow up with a perfectly paved path into Hollywood, either. He was a self-taught kid from Victoria, British Columbia — one of six boys in a rowdy house where the basement was for fights and he was the one dancing in the corner — turning cardboard boxes into cars and Lego into entire worlds. His “training” wasn’t fancy studios or elite programs; it was VHS tapes of Breakin’ and B-Street, late nights copying moves in the living room, and a mom who let him follow two waitresses from her diner into a hip‑hop class that changed everything. By 16, a Ninja Turtles audition he prepped for in the middle of the closed restaurant earned him his first paid dance job — and a check in the mail that quietly rewired his brain: you can actually get paid to do what you love.

In this episode of Call Sheet Confessions, Paul and I trace how that self‑taught island kid became an award‑winning director, choreographer, writer, producer, and now AI‑driven filmmaker behind projects like Disney’s Descendants, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Riverdale, The Muppets, a Lionsgate feature (Breaking Brooklyn), The Last of Us movement design, and LEGO’s first live‑action musical, Heart Lake. We dig into the brutal realities of being “the afterthought” on set — choreographing viral Riverdale numbers with almost no rehearsal time, fighting for skeleton crews and proper prep, and literally having to explain to a room of producers what a choreographer actually does. Paul breaks down how he used shadowing stunt coordinators and DPs, shooting his own concept pieces, and editing his own work as his real film school after dropping out of the official one in Vancouver.

We also get into navigating egos and vulnerability on set, from life‑changing lessons with legends like Lou Gossett Jr. and Kenny Ortega, to mentoring young Disney and Netflix talent, to the hard conversation about entitlement and “rotten eggs” in the dancer community. Paul talks about reinventing himself from dancer to choreographer to director to songwriter, what it really feels like to stand at the monitor watching actors perform words you wrote, and why he still feels like he hasn’t “made it” — even while living the exact dream he had at 13.

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Ryan Nilsen didn’t grow up with a straight line into Hollywood post‑production. He was a kid from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania — mushroom drop, small‑town Americana, classic suburbs of Philly — whose world was more theater camp and high school sports than red carpets and studio lots. At Temple University, late‑night train rides to New York, PA gigs on grad thesis films, and internships on ABC daytime talk shows became his crash course in how “real” sets run, long before Marvel, Skydance, and Apple TV+ ever entered the picture. What started as an ADHD‑kid’s love of The Office and movie nights with his parents quietly turned into a full‑blown obsession with producing, editing, and post — the part of the process where the story actually comes together.

In this episode of Call Sheet Confessions, Ryan and I walk through how a Temple film major who almost stayed a New York talk‑show intern became a post‑production coordinator on shows like Reacher, Marvel’s Agatha All Along, and big Netflix series, while also stepping into story producing on Fox’s Reality Check with Kalen Allen. We trace the brutal 12‑hour days at a talk‑show network where he literally lived at work during COVID, the furlough that forced him back to Philly, and the single referral from a fellow Owl that dropped him into his first big post job — and changed his entire career trajectory. Ryan opens up about what a post coordinator actually does day‑to‑day (dailies, edits, ADR, vendor wrangling), how union hours, tax incentives, and strikes shape where jobs even exist, why goals are allowed to change after family health scares and industry upheaval, and how a random “think tank” visit led to meeting his favorite filmmaker and acting in his movie. We also dig into navigating LA cost of living, shifting from “corporate post” to freelance story producing, the myths about staying a year at your first job, the reality of nepotism, and why community and networking — from Temple alumni mixers to Marvel hallways with Samuel L. Jackson — matter more than any one credit.

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🔔 Subscribe for more honest conversations about working in entertainment, breaking into post‑production, building creative careers through internships and referrals, surviving LA in an unpredictable industry, and what really happens on the other side of the call sheet.