Join the Sundance Institute Creative Producing team and experienced feature film producers as they present a discussion on strategies for low- and micro-budget features, the role of the creative producer, and developing critical partnerships and audience engagement plans. We’ll also share best practices for building your professional network and sustaining your producing career.
The master class is FREE and attendance is first-come, first-served.
The Creative Producing Master Class is presented by Sundance Institute in collaboration with Cinetopia. This program is made possible by generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.Â
Producing the Micro-Budget Feature
Producers Adele Romanski (Moonlight) and Sev Ohanian (Searching) share stories and lessons learned from producing their early micro-budget feature films, developing strategies for finding creative collaborators, and building a career as a creative producer. We will delve into the specifics of creating work with limited resources and talk about concrete tactics for emerging producers who seek to bootstrap their own micro-budget features. Moderated by Anne Lai.
Developing Audience & Partnerships—Lessons From Doc Filmmaking
Documentary filmmakers have long developed audiences and partnerships for their films before and during production. And with the rise of crowdfunding and impact campaigns, strategies previously only available to documentary makers are now increasingly viable for scripted features as well. Hear from filmmaker Rudy Valdez (The Sentence, 2018 Sundance Film Festival) and Sundance Documentary Program director and filmmaker Rick Perez (Cesar's Last Fast) as they discuss strategies for developing audiences and allies for your film before you shoot a frame. Moderated by Karim Ahmad.
Sev Ohanian is a screenwriter and producer who graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2012. Since then, he has produced a dozen indie features, starting with Fruitvale Station. Most recently, he co-wrote and produced Searching, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and won the NEXT Audience Award.
Adele Romanski is an Academy Award– and Golden Globe–winning producer whose credits include the award-winning Moonlight, Morris from America, The Myth of the American Sleepover, and the Golden Globe–nominated series The Girlfriend Experience. She co-founded the production company Pastel, whose upcoming projects include David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake and Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk.
Rudy Valdez is a Michigan-raised, Brooklyn-based filmmaker. He got his start on the Peabody Award–winning Sundance Channel series Brick City and has worked for directors and producers such as Sebastian Junger, Whoopi Goldberg, Geeta Gandbhir, and Sam Pollard. Rudy’s directorial debut, The Sentence, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award.
Karim Ahmad is the director of outreach and inclusion at Sundance Institute, where he oversees cross-platform outreach initiatives and diversity strategy and partnerships across the organization. Previously, he was a senior digital strategist for ITVS, where he headed digital content production and creative development for episodic and immersive media. He was the creator and senior producer of Indie Lens Storycast and the creator and showrunner of the iconic sci-fi series FUTURESTATES.
As director of the Creative Producing Program and artist support at Sundance Institute, Anne Lai focuses on identifying and nurturing emerging independent writers, directors, and producers in U.S. fiction film through labs, granting, and educational programming. Recent films include Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Monsters and Men, Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$, Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats.
Richard Ray Perez oversees a portfolio of Sundance Institute partnerships including Stories of Change, a partnership with the Skoll Foundation. In addition to his work at the Institute, Rick directed and executive-produced the feature documentary Cesar’s Last Fast (2014 Sundance Film Festival) and executive-produced two documentary series and directed a third for Brave New Films.
Eva Rinaldi is the director of operations for Sundance Institute's artist programs, including residency labs and workshops for filmmakers, theatre makers, and new media storytellers. Eva has a master’s in community leadership from Westminster College in Utah, and she serves on three local boards in addition to being a member of the Utah Women’s Forum.
Holden Payne is the director of technical exhibition and production at Sundance Institute. A lover of dachshunds, eclectic rock music, and fine dining, he is ready to speak nerdy with anyone on topics ranging from theatrical lighting and sound to Sonic Youth to his extensive graphic T-shirt collection.
Amber Espinosa-Jones is the coordinator of outreach and inclusion at Sundance Institute, where she previously worked for the fundraising and leadership team for two years. She has worked for a number of arts organizations looking to change the narrative of mainstream entertainment, including the Latino Theater Company, Market Road Films, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP), and ImaginexJustice. She is very pleased Kendrick Lamar is now a Pulitzer Prize winner.
