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SVA BFA Film
NEWS & EVENTS

September 16
2024

Faculty Blog: Nicolas Luna

Headshot of a man in an office wearing a neckerchief and blue shirt and glasses.
Senior Systems Administrator Nicolas Luna has been going to Gotham Week for over a decade. This year he’ll be there representing SVA! Here he writes a faculty blog on why YOU should go too this year.

 

Image of varoius people sitting at a table talking to eachother.

 

Gotham Week was first introduced to me while I was in graduate school for writing and directing fiction.

I had never heard of it, but being a student we were all given passes and strongly encouraged to attend.  The droves of filmmakers, producers, and industry professionals with whom I was able to interact and network, blew me away.

 

Gotham Week is an internationally acclaimed annual film market in NYC that featuring panels on a wide range of subjects.  Admission is free, and the knowledge gleaned from this experience is priceless.  During my first year there, I attended panels featuring Robert Eggers and his producer directly after The VVitch.  They spoke about the entire production of the film including how it took them years to raise the money for the film while Eggers was working as a grip and how finding the right location led them to a remote tract of land in Canada, as well as the festival run that preceded the national release of the film with the film’s reception.

Another panel I attended that year featured Ben Sinclair and Katya Blichfeld. Their web series High Maintenance had just been picked up by HBO for a fully realized series.  That panel focused on the grassroots nature of the production and how calling in favors from friends helped them create one of the most earnest and endearing shows in recent memory.  Other panels I attended dealt with topics ranging from distribution to new technologies in the field to fund raising and so many other necessary topics in film.  Also, you end up with a bunch of free swag from all the companies there selling or advertising their products and/or services.

I have attended every year to stay up to date with trends in the industry.

Since, at this point, I was a development producer for Hard Working Movies, I was attending the conference as an industry professional either working as a buyer for films or on the other side of the table working to raise funds for various projects.  Gotham Week is a good place to learn how the sausage is made, and expand your industry contacts.  In addition to the panels, they also have networking events and various mixers that are downright fun.

 

It helped shape my career and I continue to go every year, even if it’s just for a couple of panels and networking events.  It’s all about who you know in film and Gotham Week can help stack your rolodex.  It takes meeting those people, talking, laughing, and looking forward to working with them in the future.  This a golden opportunity which I cannot recommend more highly.

 

Filed Under: Faculty Blog