How to Be a Non-Negotiable Filmmaker: free online workshop with Lisa Stock

How to Be a Non-Negotiable Filmmaker
free online workshop with Lisa Stock

Online. Free. Roughly 60 minutes, including live Q&A.

Most independent filmmakers give up creative control in the financing conversation without ever noticing it happen. It goes one reasonable note at a time — an investor needs a return, a return needs a comparable, and the comparable needs your story to look more like something that already worked. Nobody ever says “make it less yours.” It just ends up that way.

Lisa Stock built a career that doesn’t work like that. She funds her films through a donor base instead of investors, and that one structural choice changes everything downstream: what she’s allowed to make, how long she gets to develop it, and who she has to answer to when a story asks for something strange.

Lisa is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer based in New York City. Her films have screened at festivals worldwide, aired on PBS, and been chosen as a Project of the Day on Kickstarter. Faerie Magazine called her “a skillful alchemist at work.”

What we’ll cover:

• Donors vs. investors — what each one wants from you, and what each one costs you creatively

• How to build a base of people who fund the filmmaker, not just one project

• Why time spent in research and development is the most underrated advantage in indie film

• How that R&D quality gets a project noticed by festival programmers, and how one selection leads to the next

• Live Q&A — bring a question about your own film

Who this is for: People actively making films. Documentary makers, producers who want to direct, filmmakers with a story that doesn’t fit an obvious box, and anyone who has been quietly shrinking their own idea to make it easier to fund. If you’re at the “someday” stage, you’re welcome too — but come with a project in mind, because the Q&A is where the value is.

How to join: The session runs inside our community on Skool, not on Zoom. Join free at skool.com/theattractioncollective before Tuesday so you’re not signing up at the door. The recording is posted there afterward, but the Q&A only works if you’re in the room.

About the host: I’m Alexsiya Flora — 11 features produced, 5 directed, 25 years in the film industry. I run The Attraction Collective, a community for filmmakers making unconventional stories