Womens Panel “Creative Forces Women in the Biz” : (SBIFF, 2012)

Reviewed by Jose De Anda. Attended at the SBIFF.

This panel was interesting. Our panelist were almost all producers. They were Denise Ream, Leslie Urdang, Dede Gardner and Mellissa Cobb.I learned that sometimes these women, who were mainly producers can be very political.That or they’ve never been hazed do to being women. They said that they felt like that idea that women are treated differently is inaccurate. They are big studio producers though, so I figure that they did have certain obligations to keep an image.

One of the panelists did start out in Independent Cinema which is a lot different than studio cinema so I figure she hasn’t been treated differently than men. They probably don’t have the problem of dealing with gender harrasment because they are on top of the food chain. The producer is the most powerful person on set and the boss never has to deal with rubbish because they can just fire them.

The best piece of advise I took from this insightful panel was to just do it. Dede responded to the question of someone with a very inspiring response. “Don’t sell yourself short, just get out there and do it” was what she said. This implies that anyone can do it, which is another valuable piece of encouragement.

Dede is very smart, after getting her break in acting on a Woody Allen she got into production (the most profitable aspect of film making) then finally set up her own marketing and production company. She definitely set herself up for financial success. A must in a cutthroat world.

It was inspiring to here one of the panelist talk about how in order to become a film guru she did a lot of different jobs. This led insight into the value of being cross trained, to which she attributed a lot of her success. I think it’s crucial in a world were every day the crew gets smaller and smaller due to budget constraints.

I enjoyed this panel a lot, although I would have wished for some deeper responses regarding gender and film. I still can’t believe they think women are treated equally to men. Anyway, a very insightful and positive encouraging experience.