Learn how to budget your next film project to maximize your time, funds, and potential supporters. Our panel of experts include Claudia Myers (feature), Rosemary Reed (nonprofit), Sharon Sobel (freelance), and Karen Thomas (documentary). Our panel will discuss the current trends, prices and budgets from freelance work to features.

$15 WIFV Members / $30 Public
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PANELISTS

Claudia Myers is a DC-based writer/producer/director. She is currently in post-production on Fort Bliss starring Michelle Monaghan and Ron Livingston. In 2010, Claudia produced the independent DC-based comedy Below the Beltway with Tate Donovan, Sarah Clarke, Noah Wyle, and Spencer Garrett. The film won the Audience Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival and was acquired by Showtime. Previously, Claudia wrote and directed the feature film Kettle of Fish, starring Mathew Modine and Gina Gershon. The movie premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2007.

As a screenwriter, Claudia has won several awards, was twice a finalist for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and is a recent alumna of the Hamptons Screenwriters Lab. Claudia’s script Wild Oats is currently in development to star Shirley MacLaine and Alan Arkin. She has also directed two award-winning short films, including the Sundance short Buddy & Grace. Outside of narrative fiction, Claudia has worked with the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs to produce several award-winning films for and about the military community. Claudia is a professor in the Film & Media Arts division of American University’s School of Communication.  


Rosemary Reed is owner & President of Double R Productions.  Founded in 1987 and successfully operating in Washington, DC for 26 years, the communications and television production company has served clients as varied as major national newspapers, Fortune 500 companies, the US government, associations, corporations, local arts organizations and many nonprofits.

Reed established her reputation in Washington, DC working for the FOX network as the executive producer of Panorama, the nation's longest-running, live, daily talk show with Maury Povich.  She also produced the first weekend news hour for WTTG-TV (FOX) in Washington.  Reed’s career as a reporter, anchor and special projects television producer/director has covered all major regions of the country.  Her assignments have taken her abroad to witness crisis situations in Israel and El Salvador.  She has worked in countries all over the world as a producer, director and writer.  She began her media career as a radio station news director.  Her work has been recognized with awards from CINE, Telly, NATAS, UPI, AP, TIVA and many other organizations.


Sharon Sobel has been freelancing in the metro DC area since 2003.  Prior to that, she was the production manager at Maguire-Reeder, where she was responsible for hiring and paying freelancers, and keeping projects on deadline and on budget.  She used the knowledge and business skills gained on that job as she embarked on to freelancing.

Sharon works as a freelancer for production companies and television stations in the area, filling roles from production assistant to producer/director.  She also produces script-to-screen projects for corporate clients on her own, bringing in freelancers, as necessary.  Her website features a rate card, an estimate request form, and an express booking feature that helps her clients take some of the guesswork out of what she’ll cost, and if she’s even available!   


Karen Thomas is president of Film Odyssey, Inc. a 501-c-3 organization producing high-quality cultural and educational programming for the American television audience since its incorporation in 1986, exploring the visual arts and literature, American history and music, cinema and science.  As an award-winning producer, writer and director Thomas has contributed 16 hours of cultural programming to the national PBS television schedule over the past 28 years, including several segments for American Masters.  Film Odyssey is currently in production for The Art and Life of James McNeill Whistler, in scripting a documentary on social change in 19th-century America, and in research/development for a project on the visual arts.

Thomas founded Film Odyssey in 1986 after serving as vice president of the Film Company in Washington, DC.  She began her television career at the Public Broadcasting Service.  During her tenure, she encouraged and solicited quality documentaries from independent producers for the network, and was responsible for the review of acquisitions and proposals from independent producers, management of program discretionary funds and the initiation of a long-term program planning system. Thomas has served as a juror and panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 


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