What you already know...

Women are woefully underrepresented in the world of narrative film. This leaves the market under-served, audiences deprived and women silenced.   While the reasons are open to debate, the result is that women filmmakers face almost insurmountable hurdles when they try to make the jump to feature films.   In 2014 I decided to do something practical to help solve this. 

Our Solution

The idea was to collect a group of women filmmakers and work together on all the skills, tools and connections needed to launch our features.  I brought the idea to Terry Lawler at New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT) and she gave us a home, listened to all my ideas, improved them, and then opened her rolladex.  And in 2015 we launched From Script to Pre-Production (FS2P).

How does it work?

Many filmmakers are trained and accomplished artists but lack the business experience needed to make independent, low-budget features.  The FS2P lab helps fill that gap in three ways:

·      our curriculum organizes the process of building presentations. 

·      we provide mentors and guest experts. 

·      we work together as a group, helping one another through this often lengthy and challenging experience.

Starting in January, filmmakers meet once a week for over six months to create their presentations and prepare to launch their projects.  Over the summer they continue to refine their presentations.  In the fall we bring them out to members of the industry for feedback and partnership. 

Look who's helping us!

The industry loves this idea and has been very welcoming.  New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT) gave us our home.  And since our first session in 2014, we have had counsel and support from:

ISABELLE LINK-LEVY

NAOMI MCDOUGALL JONES

VICTORIA NEGRI

LYDIA PILCHER

CELINE RATTRAY

SABINE SCHENK

PAUL SCHNEE

DEBBIE VANDERMEULEN

PIERCE VAROUS

RACHEL WATANABE-BATTON

JAMIE ZELERMYER

Mentors and Angels

We have to give a special shout out to the people who've gone above and beyond.

First and foremost Terry Lawler who believed in us and has had our back every step of the way.  Her wonderful staff at NYWIFT - Katie Chambers, Victoria Vasquez, Elizabeth Estrada and Rashiek Smart.  Our fabulous board members - Kerry Fulton and Jamie Zelermyer - who read all the scripts, listen to all the pitches, look at all our presentations, gIve us feedback and encouragement and always have my back.  John Hadity who is not only the nicest man in the industry but takes the time to explain how this business really works.  Marcia Murray and Janet Guillet from DDB who help transform our lookbooks.  Flo Mitchell-Brown for convincing EP to give us software and Rich Guay for training us so that we could make preliminary budgets.  Seed & Spark for training us in outreach and crowdfunding.  Light Iron - thank you, Megan Marquis! - for throwing us our annual party.

Thank you.