Panelists

Elisabeth Holm (Kickstarter) As Kickstarter’s Film Program Director, Elisabeth oversees film curation, editorial, events, outreach, and education. She recently served as a producer on Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Oscar-nominated Paradise Lost 3 and Keith Miller’s Slamdance, Seattle International, and Atlanta Grand Jury Prize-winning Welcome to Pine Hill. She’s currently producing Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child starring Jenny Slate.

Stephen Hays Stephen Hays is an executive producer and managing member of 120dB Films, a finance company specializing in gap and related loans to the independent film industry. Recent projects include Battle in Seattle, Sixty Six, Motherhood,The Dream of the Romans,Knife Edge, Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger, Good, Savage Grace and the TNT series Leverage, he was co-founder and General Partner of Seneca Capital, a $3.5 billion, New York-based hedge fund, where he remains a partner and adviser.

Robert L. Seigel is a NYC entertainment attorney with over twenty years experience who specializes in the representation of clients in film and television as well as in theatre, publishing, new media and intellectual property matters on a transactional basis.

Claude dal Farra is the president of BCDF and the producer of Bachelorette, Liberal Arts, Peace Love & Misunderstanding, Why Stop Now, Higher Ground, The Last Keepers and Rhymes with Banana.

Each producer will discuss a similarly sized project (approximately $1MM budget) in a different medium including TV, mobile, film, gaming, viral video, and Alternate Reality Games’s.

You will walk away knowing the budgets, tools, metrics, marketing, audience, and business structure of each project. A look into future platform trends will also be shared. Gain an understanding of how formats new and old, individually or mashed up, are creating new opportunities for content creators. This session will be accessible to all audiences, and entertaining in its candor.

Moderator

Caitlin Burns is Transmedia Producer with Starlight Runner Entertainment, Caitlin Burns creates and influences fictional universes that are familiar to millions worldwide. Building on a background of Theatrical and Event Production she has worked on Pirates of the Caribbean, and Tron Legacy for Disney, James Cameron’s Avatar, Halo for Microsoft, The Happiness Factory for Coca-Cola, Men in Black for Sony Pictures and Transformers for Hasbro. She has also worked with Showtime, Nickelodeon, Scholastic, Nelvana, and Wieden+Kennedy. She is on the Board of the Producer’s Guild of America’s New Media Council and the Advisory Board the Tribeca New Media Fund. She is currently working on a slate that includes major motion pictures, documentary feature films and television shows in the United States, Italy, Mexico, Canada and Brazil.

Panelists

Peter Saraf's producing credits include, Safety Not Guaranteed, Our Idiot Brother, Jack Goes Boating, Sunshine Cleaning, Away We Go, Is Anybody There?, Little Miss Sunshine, Everything Is Illuminated, The Truth About Charlie, Adaptation, Ulee’s Gold and the feature documentaries, Mandela and The Agronomist. He has been nominated for Academy and Golden Globe Awards and has won multiple awards including the Spirit, Gotham and PGA Awards. He is the co-founder of Big Beach, a New York based independent film production and financing company. Peter is Vice President of the Producers Guild of America and Chair of the PGA East.

Blaine Graboyes is an award-winning Executive Producer and Game Designer with nearly twenty years’ experience developing digital and multiplatform entertainment. He has been a founder of multiple successful startups including ZUMA Digital (the first DVD company in NYC), Worldwide Biggies, Hope Arcade, Sano Agency, Silver Platter, and Mister Goldbanks. Blaine is a Member-At-Large of the Executive Committee of the New Media Council of The Producers Guild Of America. His most recent project is SneakyTown, a competitive hide-and-seek game currently in stealth Beta on Facebook and iPad.

James Percelay is co-founder of Thinkmodo, recognized as one the top viral video creative agencies in the world. Thinkmodo’s outrageous videos for major motion pictures, TV networks, and magazines consistently top the viral video charts. James is a best-selling humor book author, former film producer of the commercial parodies at “Saturday Night Live,” and a pioneer of content driven social media.

Moderator

Martha Frankel Whether she’s one on one in an intimate talk, or leading a discussion among a variety of actors, Martha Frankel’s entertaining panels are one of the festival highlights.

Actors

Sally Kirkland veteran of over 130 film is best known for her film Anna for which she was nominated for the best actress Oscar and won the Golden Globe and the Independent Spirit Award. Highlights of her career include , The Sting, The Way We Were, Revenge, Edtv, Best Of The Best, Jfk, Bruce Almighty, The Haunted - ATrue Story. She stars in Archaeology Of A Woman, which is screening it's East Coast Premiere at the 2012 Woodstock Film Festival.

Brian Geraghty is a versatile actor best known for his roles in The Hurt Locker, Jarhead, and We Are Marshall. His recent films include Paramount's upcoming Robert Zemekis film Flight, the reunion dramedy Ten Years, and the independent feature Kilimanjaro.

Moderator

Scott MaCaulay is the Editor of Filmmaker Magazine and a producer with his partner Robin O’Hara in the New York-based production company Forensic Films. He is also the co-editor of Focus Features’ FilmInFocus website. Among his producing credits are Raising Victor Vargas, Gummo, julien donkey-boy, the Sundance Grand-Prize winning What Happened Was..., Idlewild, Saving Face, and Off the Black.

Panelists

Danielle DiGiacomo is the Manager of Video Distribution at The Orchard, a pioneering, 15-year old independent music and video distribution company operating in more than 20 global markets. She is also an independent film producer and consultant. Previously, she worked as the Community Manager at IFP, and Head of Documentary Acquisitions for IndiePix Films.

David Laub is Co-President of the NY-based Oscilloscope Pictures, where he oversees acquisitions, marketing, and distribution. Oscilloscope is a film production and distribution entity launched in 2008 by Adam Yauch; recent releases have included Samsara, Shut Up and Play The Hits, We Need To Talk About Kevin, The Messenger, Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy. Prior to Oscilloscope, David did acquisitions for the NY-based distributor THINKFilm.

Ron Mann makes award-winning feature documentaries that focus on alternative and dissent culture. WFF has been showing Mann’s films since Go Further, a musical-eco-road movie about activism and sustainable living. His other films include Know Your Mushrooms, Grass, and most recently, In the Wake of the Flood. In 2002, Ron also founded FILMS WE LIKE, a boutique distributor of documentary, independent and international films in Canada. Beginning with Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s The Weather Underground (2002), Films We Like has released over 160 films including, most recently, Miguel Gomes award-winning Tabu (2012).

Richard Abramowitz is at the forefront of innovation in the world of distribution and marketing of independent films. His company, Abramorama, is an industry leader in the personalized, focused form of film marketing/distribution that bypasses traditional film studios and their methodology, providing invaluable distribution alternatives to current content makers and owners.

In 2012 BMI will present a case study of the music from the WFF official selection Vamps with director Amy Heckerling, composer David Kitay and actress Mollie Israel from Vamps. Moderator

Doreen Ringer-Ross is Vice President of Film and TV Relations at BMI. She has worked in the music industry for over two decades and currently specializes in outreach to the film and music communities.

Panelists

Amy Heckerling directed Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and has written and directed a dozen other films, including Look Who’s Talking, Clueless, and Vamps. She also directed episodes for the television series of Fast Times, Clueless, The Office and Gossip Girl.

David Kitay is film composer of Look Who’s Talking, Clueless, Can’t Hardly Wait, Scary Movie, Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle and Dude, Where Is My Car? as well as Ghost World, Bad Santa, Art School Confidential and The Darwin Awards.

Lauren Versel is a founding member of Lucky Monkey Pictures and has over twenty- five years of experience in film, television, and theater as a writer, director, editor, producer and financier. In addition to Vamps she produced Arbitrage and City Island and the upcoming Married and Cheating starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Brendan Frasier and Marisa Tomei.

Moderator

Robin Bronk is CEO of The Creative Coalition—the leading national, nonprofit, nonpartisan public advocacy organization of the entertainment industry. Ms. Bronk is an author and public speaker and most recently produced Showtime’s Poliwood, directed by Academy Awardwinner Barry Levinson. She also pens a weekly column for The Hill newspaper. She is often featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post, and more.

Panelists

Todd Wider with Jedd Wider formed Wider Film Projects several years ago as a film company devoted to developing projects that have social and political resonance. They have produced numerous critically and commercially successful documentary films including the 2008 academy award winner for Best Documentary, Taxi To The Dark Side (2007) directed by Alex Gibney and the upcoming Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, screening at the 2012 WFF.

Rachel Grady along with partner Heidi Ewing, have been lauded for gaining unprecedented access into unknown worlds and taking an intimate approach to her subject matter. She is the co-director (with Heidi Ewing) of Jesus Camp, a provocative documentary on the Evangelical right that was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award.

Jon Bowermaster a six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council writer/filmmaker/adventure Jon’s most recent documentaries are Terra Antarctica, Rediscovering the Seventh Continent, What Would Darwin Think? Man v. Nature in the Galapagos and the prize-winning SoLa, Louisiana Water Stories. His first 3D film – Wild Antarctica – is due in Spring 2013 and the anti-fracking doc Dear Governor Cuomo ... will have its ‘premiere’ at WFF 2012.

Mai Iskander directorial debut, Garbage Dreams, was nominated for the 2010 Best Documentary by the Director’s Guild of America, and has won 26 international awards. As a cinematographer, Mai has worked on TV shows for A&E, PBS, and LOGO. She has filmed numerous dramatics, commercials and documentaries, including Watchers of the Sky by Academy Award Nominee Edet Belzberg. Mai’s film Words of Witness is screening at the 2012 Woodstock Film Festival.

Moderator

Thelma Adams is the Contributing Editor at Yahoo! Movies. Her debut novel PLAYDATE, an O magazine pick, was published by St. Martin’s Press in January 2011, and came out in paperback in March 2012. She was the film critic at Us Weekly from 2000 - 2011, following six years at the New York Post. She has twice chaired the New York Film Critics Circle, where she has been a member since 1995.

Panelists

Blair Breard is the Executive Producer of the comedy series, Louie. Notable films include John Sayles’ Passion Fish, Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol, Louis CK’s Pootie Tang, Kenneth Lonergan’s, Margaret and Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding.

Timothy Hutton won an Academy Award®, a Golden Globe and Los Angeles Film Critic’s award for his performance in Ordinary People. He went on to star in numerous films, including Taps, Daniel, Falcon and the Snowman, The Good Shepherd and The Ghost Writer. He is currently starring on the fifth season of the TNT drama Leverage.