Emily Best, CEO of Seed&Spark and top online fundraiser, to speak at Ojai Film Festival
Ms. Best, the leading online fundraiser who brought
in millions for new films, will speak on
“The Art of the Pitch”
at the Ojai Film Festival, November 3.
Filmmakers need financing. It’s that simple. But where do they go after family and friends? This has been a problem for more than a century. But now, with online fundraising, more indie filmmakers are getting the green light. Emily Best, the leading online fundraiser who brought in millions for new films, will speak on “The Art of the Pitch” at the Ojai Film Festival Saturday, November 3. Seating is limited and is expected to sell-out.
Ms. Best founded Seed&Spark, an entertainment platform, in 2012 after experiencing firsthand the struggles of crowdfunding for filmmakers while making the feature film Like the Water. Seed&Spark quickly expanded to offer comprehensive crowdfunding education. She is now the leading online fundraiser with the highest campaign success rate in the world (80%). Ms. Best has raised millions of dollars in traditional funding, equity crowdfunding, and rewards-based crowdfunding, and has contributed to over 300 crowdfunding campaigns to date.
In “The Art of the Pitch” Ms. Best will focus on how a filmmaker must prepare for a pitch meeting; how to adapt a pitch to different audiences with difference requirements; and, how to follow up for a bright future. In addition, she will lead the group through a hands-on practice session. Nothing like “real world” demands to see where a pitch is weak or off-track.
This seminar is part of the Film Festival’s Professional Development sessions that includes
‘Legal and Business” with Laura Caulfield, in-depth with Ellen Kuras, ASC, “Action in Film” with stunt coordinator John Branagan, and Loving Vincent, a screening of the Academy Award nominated animation and demonstration session with two of the artists/animators, Tiffanie Mang and Charlene Mosley.
About Emily Best
Emily Best is the founder and CEO of Seed&Spark, an entertainment platform built to increase diversity and inclusion for filmmakers and audiences. Seed&Spark’s curated streaming is fed by its crowdfunding platform, which has the highest campaign success rate in the world. In 2011, she produced the feature film, Like the Water, starring Caitlin FitzGerald (Masters of Sex, UnREAL). Since then she has served as executive producer on a host of film and virtual reality projects, which have played at festivals from Sundance to SXSW to Tribeca and beyond. She co-created and co-directed the web series F*ck Yes!, which Refinery 29 called, “The sex education you wish you had in high school,” and is currently producing a feature length documentary about the Equal Rights Amendment.
Emily was named a 2013 Indiewire Influencer, a 2014 New York Woman of Influence, included on the 2015 Upstart 100 list, and graduated from the 2016 class of Techstars Boston. She has raised millions of dollars in traditional funding, equity crowdfunding, and rewards-based crowdfunding, and contributed to over 300 crowdfunding campaigns to date.