Before You Tie the Knot: Talking About Partnerships

I recently was invited to present to the Berkeley Film Foundation community about trends in the film impact and engagement space. Lately I've been thinking a lot about the collections of stakeholders who come together around to film and all the various intersecting, and sometimes conflicting, priorities at play. Too often those points of divergence are not discussed until it's too late. So I called on my long time colleague and friend, Ellen Schneider of the Active Voice Lab, to co-create a workshop on the subject with me. The Lab has been looking at this issue over the last few years as it has begun to map out a new framework, the Prenups for Partners to address the issue. (You may be familiar with its well-known predecessor The Prenups: What Funders and Creatives Should Talk about Before Tying the Knot.)

Sadly, Ellen was pulled away at the last minute and unable to join me for the workshop, but we did come up with a fun way to dig into the issues. I invited Cristine Platt Dewey of ro*co films and Donald Young of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) to bravely dust off their acting chops and join me in some role-play. Here's what happened: