Women’s Panel

Reviewed by Kelly Bader. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2014.

At the women’s panel today there were a few strongly determined women who made into the film industry who answered some question we as spectators wanted to know. Moderator Madelyn Hammond started off the panel with the first question being, who gave you your big break. Rachel Winters one of the producers from the film “Dallas Buyer Club” told us how she called her mother after getting out of film class because she had a question. The question to her mother was, “Do we know anyone in the film industry?” her mother said, “ Yes, but he deals with porn” and Rachel said, “I don’t care give me his number”. Rachel first job was developing for the porn industry; this was what gave Rachel her big break.

Lauren MacMullan who was the director of the Disney short “Get a Horse!” caught her first big break winning a contest. MTV held a contest where you had to state a problem and solution to in, in 30 seconds. She did hers on the pollution of the environment and the solution to this issue was to get out of your car and walk. This opportunity then lead to being involved in the Simpsons movie along with the television show Avatar the Last Air Bender, which has now lead to her Disney career in the animations studio. This just goes to show you that you can open many doors of opportunity if you just your work out there for others to see.

The producer of “The Croods” Kristine Belson caught her first big break with the company, Reading and Creative Writing Industry. She developed films for the movie “Forest Gump” and then she kept on climbing up and eventually ended up in the Dream Work Studios. Here she has been working on the movie “The Croods” which was started about four and a half years ago but got postponed due to the fact the director of this film had to go and assist the director of the film “How to train your Dragon”. However, originally “The Croods” was about two brothers but had evolved in writing over that period of time into a family. Kristine is very excited about this film because it for portrays a women in down and dirty aspect rather then prim and proper.

Through out the entire panel discussion not one women ever said to give up or it was to hard, they all had can do attitude and made it happen. Statistic wise there are still more men involved in the industry however, none of these women ever feel slighted or deemed incapable of performing a task. I believe to make it in this industry as a women you have to never take no for an answer and go for it and never give up because a women’s opinion is just as important as a males.