Sustaining Your Career as a Filmmaker

Making a living as an independent filmmaker—or any kind of artist—has never been easy, but Craft Ed. has assembled a group of pros to help you chart out a course for a sustainable career. From learning how to juggle a flexible day job that lets you develop new skills and also get paid; to finding groups that offer professional, funding and creative support; to learning how to market yourself to employers and audiences, this all-day event gives you tools to smooth your path, whether you’re working in fiction film, documentary or in another creative art.. The day includes a coffee & bagel breakfast, as well as a post-seminar happy hour for networking with presenters and attendees.

Co-presented by the Documentary Producers Alliance

A discounted package to attend both the “All About Crowdfunding” and “Sustaining Your Career as a Filmmaker” Craft Ed. Seminars is available for $160 ($130 for IFC Center members). Ticket price includes a coffee & bagel breakfast, free popcorn and coffee all day, as well as a post-seminar happy hour for networking with presenters and attendees.

“Sustaining Your Career as a Filmmaker” Schedule:

☕️ 9:30am – 10:00am      Check-In / Bagel Breakfast ☕️

Attendees can enjoy complimentary popcorn and coffee all day!

10:00am – 11:00am     How to Balance a “Day Job” and Pursue an Artistic Career

Hear from filmmakers and other artists as they discuss how they manage to have a “Day Job” and create their passion projects. Get tips on how they can transfer skills and experience, and how they carve out the time for both. Panelists include Tony Shaff (Director/Producer, 44 Pages; Producer, Teen Mom franchise (MTV)),  Elizabeth Pauker (Producer, I Am the Revolution; Producer, The Criterion Collection), Kari Bentley-Quinn (playwright, Wendy and the Neckbeards; co-founder, theatre company Mission to (dit)Mars) and Beth Raymer (Author, Lay the Favorite: a Memoir of Gambling). Moderated by Julie Anderson (God Is The Bigger Elvis).

11:15am – 12:15pm     The Business of Your Business

You want to be an artist, but that also means running a business. What is your brand and what do you need to do to run a business? Hear from consultants Shena Nicole (Shena Nicole Consulting) and Joanne Zippel (Zip Creative) as they advise on how best to build your brand. Moderated by Trish Dalton (Student Athlete)

1:30pm – 2:30 pm     Improving an Industry: The State of Documentary and Efforts to Reform It

Hear from filmmakers representing the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA), a working group of over 200 documentary producers, about what they are doing to help improve the industry from the inside out. They’ll discuss the DPA’s committee structure and what each is doing to foster sustainability and inclusivity in documentary filmmaking, such as offering guides to best practices for crediting and investor relationships. Panelists include Veronique Bernard (Enter the Faun), Heidi Reinberg (93Queen) and Susan Margolin (The Rape of Recy Taylor). Moderated by Sabrina Schmidt Gordon (Quest)

2:45pm – 3:45pm     Where Do You Go for Support and How Do You Advocate for Yourself as a Freelancer?

Hear from Stephanie Alvarado (Freelancers Union) and Laura Levin-Dando (Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts) as they talk about what their organizations offer and what to do when you need to bring in outside help. Moderated by Trish Dalton (Student Athlete)

🍻4:00pm – 5:00pm Happy Hour 🍻

Panelist Bios:

STEPHANIE ALVARADO is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, community organizer, and photo archivist born and raised in the Bronx, NY by way of Guayaquil, Ecuador. She has 15 years of work experience doing audience engagement programming, policy advocacy research, curriculum development, archival research, and creative facilitation. Stephanie currently works as the founding Program Director of Freelancers Hub and is on the Board of Directors of The Literary Freedom Project. She received her BA from NYU in Psychology, Latino Studies, and Public Policy and her MA in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University.

JULIE ANDERSON is an award winning non-fiction producer, director, writer and development executive. She has created programming for ESPN, HBO Sports, HBO Documentary Films, PBS, CNN, CBS Sports, ABC Sports and BET, among many others.

KARI BENTLEY-QUINN’S plays have been presented at or developed with Lesser America, Lark Play Development Center, Halcyon Theatre, The Secret Theatre, Artemisia Theater, Fringe NYC, and more. She has been a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, and the Public Theater Emerging Writers Group. Her plays include PAPER CRANES (Backstage Critic’s Pick), THE OCEAN THOUGHT NOTHING (O’Neill NPC Finalist), PREPARED (Kilroys List Honorable Mention), THE WORST MOTHER IN THE WORLD (Halcyon Theater) and WENDY AND THE NECKBEARDS (The Relentless Award Honorable Mention). Kari has an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College.

VERONIQUE BERNARD is a non-fiction producer, director, and senior executive whose experience includes WNET, Sundance Channel, New York Times, National Geographic, ABC News, and Australian broadcaster SBS, where she was Head of Production. Recent credits include doc series E2: The Economies of Being Environmentally Conscious (PBS/Sundance), The Man Who Invented Himself: Duane Michals (Special Mention Prize, FIFA, 2013), series Redesign My Brain (ABC Australia, Science Channel, Discovery, 2014), PBS series Art in the Twenty-First Century (2016), and Enter The Faun (America ReFramed, 2017). She is currently producing three feature documentaries, and teaching in the Integrated Media Arts MFA program at Hunter College.

TRISH DALTON is a Brooklyn based, award winning independent filmmaker with over 15 years of experience. Her documentaries cover subjects ranging from the occupation of Iraq to the US-Mexico border fence and have been broadcast on HBO, Time-Warner, PBS and Ovation after screening at many film festivals. In addition to her own films, Trish has produced many personal story, social impact videos for corporations, non-profits, and governments, garnering such notable clients as National Geographic Television, Amazon, Kashi, Danskin, Conde Naste, Capital One Spark, Pepsi, ILLY, Cole Haan, Microsoft, Cossette, The Global Ocean Commission, and the Presidency of Senegal.

ELIZABETH PAUKER is a producer at The Criterion Collection and the Criterion Channel. Elizabeth is also an independent film producer of female-focused shorts and feature-length documentaries, including Death Metal Grandma (New York Times Op-Doc, 2018) and I Am The Revolution (2018).