Check Out Donovan Henning-Di Bella’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Donovan Henning-Di Bella.

Hi Donovan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
One of my earliest memories is a lie. Or maybe it was a dream. Or maybe not. Chicago, Winter, early 2000s, the snow was blinding. The small play structure at my preschool bustled with other kids: screams and folly. During recess, I discovered a hole in the center of the play structure, plastic and sun-yellow, that led to the center, to silence. I was only there for what seemed like a few minutes, but when I came out, I was alone. My friends had disappeared, slashed winds cut through my ears, nose numb from the cold, and I was lost. My teacher was there, far away by the door, beckoning me. “Where have you been? It’s been thirty minutes.”
I would tell one version or another of this story again and again when I was a kid, believing it to be real. Wanting it, maybe. When I moved from Chicago to Oceanside, I fell in love with telling stories. Writing dumb comics, telling tall tales, wishing them all to be real. My dad used to watch my hours-long telling of stories through my action figures all throughout the house. He used to tell me stories.
It wasn’t until middle school that I started making movies. Well, if you count broadcast as movies. I didn’t. Damn, I hated making those. My broadcast elective felt restrictive, boring. Instead of interviewing fellow classmates about their favorite cafeteria item, I made nonsensical short films. I always knew I wanted to tell stories; I was just figuring out how to do it. My dad would show me movies. Some stupid, some stupidly profound. When he died, I stopped caring. I stopped everything, really.
My story? Sure. How I got from point A to point B. I was born, I’m here, and eventually I’ll die. But while I’m between those two points, telling stories will do me just fine.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Does everything happen for a reason? When my dad died, I didn’t believe it. I thought the world was a trash heap and I a forgotten toy. A little nothing with no face and no name. I wasn’t angry, I was empty. Movies were the best distraction. These glamorous snapshots of lives outside of mine lost me within their worlds. Mine was put on the back burner.
When I was younger, I would get into fights. Scraps that I would pick only to lose and lose again. My dad helped me a lot through those times. He would pull me to the side and say, “You’re my favorite,” when my sister would be asleep and we’d be watching Adult Swim shows. He would answer, “It’s your fault. I just wanted to spend more time with you, and your mom didn’t like that,” when I asked him why he and my mom got divorced. And I believed him.
My dad always tried to be a good father. But he would hurt people when he was trying to help them. He would lie to make himself look better than he was. He was a drug addict and dealt with it most of his life. But he was always happy. So happy it was infectious. I couldn’t be around him without a big smile on my face. He loved my sister and me like nothing else. He loved my brother like nothing else. He would do anything for us. In and out of courts, battling for custody. My sister and I come from a different mother than our brother. Beatings and screaming, scratches and 911 calls. He had to get out, away from her, my brother’s mother. Once he did, he spent quite a few more years recovering and relapsing. Two years before he died, he committed to sobriety. He was living his best life. He had a 50/50 custody deal with my sister and me, and he just acquired full custody of my brother. He was close to two years sober. He had the best relationship he’s had with my mom since he cheated on her. He was probably the happiest he’s ever been. Now he had his son, saved from his mom, my father’s ex-wife, a person who could hurt him no more. Because of that, she murdered him.
When I found out, it was the night after I watched San Andreas, that terrible disaster movie starring The Rock. My mom woke me up, trying to be strong. Her face was stern. Why? “When’s dad picking us up?” I asked. I just remember her tears. I was in the middle of seventh grade, and I don’t remember much. Just the movies I watched. But, does everything happen for a reason? Would I be here today if he didn’t die? I’m not sure, but I’d like to believe I am because there’s no use thinking about a past that never happened. There’s a reason for everything. And although I can call this a struggle, would I be who I am today if it truly were?

I smoked weed heavily for a few years; that’s a bit of a struggle. A bit more fun than the last one, too. Weed leads to writer’s block leads to depression, which leads right back to my dad.
My best friend, Elijah Koehler, is a beautiful bastard. I love him about as much as I fight with him. Living with him for a few years, I learned a lot about myself. Smoked a lot of weed, too. Good times. But things change. Of the short films I’ve made, he was the one who gave me the best ideas. No masterpiece is created by one mind, after all. And it’s definitely a cheeky ego-boost to call my short films masterpieces. They’re more so experiments. Trying what I like and seeing if it works. But our bickering begets sadness and anger. I’ve had some of the best moments in my life with him, and some of the worst. But all the same, he’s my best friend, my brother, and I love him.
Trouble with friends, trouble with family, trouble with myself. My actions and my lack thereof. These things I’ve learned from. So I don’t regret them. I think asking the question, ‘Does everything happen for a reason?’ really means ‘Do I have any regrets?’ If you live with regrets, things happen for no reason. Without them, everything culminates in who you are today. If you love yourself, then the reasons are just a means for the results. Who you are. So don’t live with regrets. Make an effort to think about every word and every action, because the only people you truly matter to is yourself, your family, and those friends of yours that you can call family. We all die, but make sure you die happy, just like my dad did.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a writer and director. But I make money as a sound mixer. Damn, it’s a lucrative market. “Everybody needs a sound guy.” I started my professional career by accidentally slipping into the sound position of one of my friend’s films, a feature. One conversation led to another. One friend led to one more. Eventually, I started making money. It wasn’t until I met Preston Weaver that I was asked to write something. Oh, the opportunity! I had to jump through that window. I wrote a feature script for him, DARK MODE. About an investigative journalist who creates YouTube documentaries tracking LA gang members whom she believes have something to do with her brother’s suicide. Characters are what drive a story, so creating interesting people is what truly matters when writing. I try to look for the liars, the reasoners, those that present themselves as something they’re not, because many people in real life are that way. Especially in this industry of plastered-on smiles and stiff back slaps. Exposing the falsities is what interests me. And all my characters face a reckoning of their own design.
I’m most proud of my ideas, constantly evolving and changing. I’m even proud of the bad ones due to the very fact that it was an idea. I think a lot of who you are comes out in your writing. Bits and pieces of philosophy and experience. My favorite movies were always those that kept me interested, that didn’t let me go for a second. So I strive for that. I believe too many people are dialed in on doing what’s been done before, but cinema is ever changing. I look for what hasn’t been done, what hasn’t been said. I look for the cracks in the crevices, the darkness in the light, and, being less ambiguous, the ideas that are different.

What matters most to you?
I want to make a movie that’s somebody’s favorite movie. Not the obvious, though. It can’t be my mom or my grandma, nobody I know. If one day I make a film and see a review that says it’s their favorite movie, even if it’s until they see their next favorite movie. I can die happy. I can die knowing I changed somebody for some time without ever speaking a word to them. Changing them through a film.

I work with a few companies that I owe my success to thus far. David “Mitch” Parks with RadCine. Preston Weaver with Weaver Media. Ovsanna Yepremyan with OhSeek Productions, and Leanne Bauer with Vista Film Sales. My company, Haus Amad Pictures, is a fairly new entity. My goal with this company is to create the films that I dream of. The name is a combination of my two favorite movies, Hausu (1977) and Amadeus (1984). But sounds more like ‘House O’Mad’.
I owe a lot of my sound expertise to James Raub. Damn! What a man! He’s the person who swept me up and taught me everything I know. I wouldn’t be here today without him. Next to that, my mom. Heather Di Bella. She’s my rock, the only person who has never judged me and has always supported me. I literally and figuratively wouldn’t be here without her.

What matters to me most? Dying happy. Dying knowing that I made these people that I love proud, and that I made what I saw in my heart. If my dad were here, I’m sure he would be proud, too.

Pricing:

• -Screenwriting (Feature): $3,000 + $50 per revision
• -Screenwriting (Short): $750 + $50 per revision
• -Sound Mixing: $300/day + $400 kit fee
• -Sound Design/Dialogue correction: $50/hour
• -Editing (Short): $50/hour

Contact Info:

• Website: https://donovanzhenning.wixsite.com/film/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dbossx2/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554351771760
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dbossx2491