About Us
Elizabeth Gaylynn Baker
President of Board
Award winning writer and filmmaker, Elizabeth Gaylynn Baker worked on eleven independent films in Los Angeles before writing and directing her first documentary, "When Buffalo Roam". The film won Best Social Documentary Short of 1999 at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.
Elizabeth’s next project was a feature-length documentary, "The Trail of Painted Ponies", narrated by Ali MacGraw and judged by Sony Classics in New York. The film won Best Documentary at the White Sands Film Festival of 2005, while Baker won Best Woman Director. It also aired in New York on PBS and was included in an exhibition of The Best of New Mexico Independent Films in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In 2002, Baker worked closely with New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, and also recruited Shirley MacLaine, Val Kilmer, Marsha Mason and members of the New Mexico House and Senate, to pass groundbreaking film legislation. It was the historical beginning of New Mexico’s vital film industry.
Bill Rogers
Bill Rogers is an investor, head of the nonprofit foundation Serendipity, and a member of the FAPI Board of Directors.
Rogers has worked with formulating public policy within a presidential body and has been an active participant in conferences addressing environmental concerns and opportunities associated with Intelligent Transportation Systems.
He worked in the ’90s to promote high speed rail in the Midwest and in California. He has been a Senior Policy Analyst for the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago and Transportation Planner for the California Department of Transportation in San Bernardino, California.
Rogers has a Master’s of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from George Washington University.
Chuck Smallwood
Charles Smallwood, a key grip and a member of the FAPI Board of Directors, has worked in the motion picture industry for 23 years. Some of the many feature films Smallwood has worked on are “Dumb & Dumber,” “Godzilla,” “Starship Troopers,” “National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers,” and “D2: The Mighty Ducks.”
Based in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, New Mexico, some of Smallwood’s recent work includes “Georgia O’Keeffe,” “Night and Day,” “Easy Money,” “Barry Munday” and “Greek.” Smallwood lived in Hawaii during the first two seasons of “Lost,” and while there he built a Grip Crew from the ground up, as well as built the grip trucks. Smallwood not only survived but thrived while shooting more than 400 days during tropical depression rains, incredible mud and some of the most inaccessible locations possible.
Through his association with Leonard Chapman and Chapman Studio Equipment, Smallwood has helped design and develop the CS line of mobile camera crane bases, the Chapman Camera Slider, the Rotating Offset Low Mode for Pee Wee Dollies, the Nose Seat for Dollies, and Enterprise Low Mode for the Hustler IV Dolly, to name a few.