Film Financing

Effie T. Brown is an award winning film and television Producer, known for championing inclusion and diversity in Hollywood, both behind and in front of the camera. Through her company, Duly Noted Inc., Brown has produced several critically acclaimed and award winning projects including Stranger Inside, Jane Campion’s In the Cut, Real Women Have Curves, Everyday People, Rocket Science and the Sundance hit Dear White People. With a love of multiple platforms Brown focused on digital episodic content and produced over 130 episodes of WIGS, an award winning, original content channel funded by Google/YouTube. In 2015, Brown joined Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as Producer and Mentor in the controversial reboot of Project Greenlight. In 2016 Brown Executive Produced the hit series Star on FOX. In keeping with her commitment to inclusive and diverse content in 2018 Effie Executive Produced Disney Channel’s Zombies. Brown is also a member of the Academy Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) and serves as a Film Independent Board member.

Emily Best is the founder and CEO of Seed&Spark, an entertainment platform built to increase diversity and inclusion for filmmakers and audiences. Seed&Spark’s curated streaming platform is fed by its crowdfunding platform, which has the highest campaign success rate in the world. 2011, she produced the feature film Like the Water, starring Caitlin FitzGerald (Masters of Sex, UnREAL). Since then, she has served as an executive producer on a host of film and virtual reality projects that have been played at festivals from Sundance to SXSW to Tribeca and beyond. Most recently, she co-created and co-directed the web series F*ck Yes!, which Refinery 29 called “The sex education you wish you had in high school.” Emily was named a 2013 Indiewire Influencer, a 2014 New York Woman of Influence, was included on the 2015 Upstart 100 list and graduated from the 2016 class of Techstars Boston. She has raised millions of dollars in traditional funding, equity crowdfunding, and rewards-based crowdfunding and contributed to over 300 crowdfunding campaigns to date.

Nina Ameri is an attorney focusing on One LLP’s entertainment law, intellectual property law and tax law practices. Mrs. Ameri represents independent film producers, production companies, writers, actors, and directors in a variety of transactions ranging from the acquisition of intellectual property and life story rights, corporate formation, talent agreements, writer agreements, producer agreements, director agreements, music licensing agreements for independent motion pictures, sales agency, and distribution agreements. In addition, Mrs. Ameri has represented clients in entertainment litigation in both state and federal courts and advises clients in pre-litigation dispute resolution. As a Los Angeles native, Mrs. Ameri has many relationships within the sphere of entertainment, media, finance, and law, which are valuable resources for entertainment clients in assisting them with the development, financing, and distribution of their projects. Within the sphere of intellectual property law, Mrs. Ameri has substantial experience assisting clients in prosecuting, protecting, and defending Trademarks and Copyrights.

Viviana Zarragoitia began her career in the entertainment industry working in production accounting at Millennium Films and Bold Films. She then spent 5 years at Lionsgate, where she started working in the accounting department and segued into the finance division, specifically, profit participation. While working in profit participation, she oversaw the preparation of multi-million dollar film and television distribution deals. She was then promoted to the group’s audit division, where she managed film and television royalty audits of producers’ profit participation statements. In 2013, she joined Three Point Capital, a boutique firm that specializes in senior lending on film and television projects. While at Three Point Capital, Viviana has been involved in the financing of over 70 independent films and worked with such producers as Cassian Elwes, Rob Barnum, Anthony Bregman, James Schamus, Aaron Gilbert, Kimberly Steward, Nicolas Chartier and Kevin Frakes, among others. As Vice President, Viviana closes the financing on every film that the company is involved in, as well as manages the company’s operations in its satellite offices (Ohio, Kentucky, and Louisiana). Viviana has received over a dozen Executive Producers credits on titles she has financed. She graduated Cum Laude with a double major in Business and English from Loyola Marymount University.

Iram Parveen Bilal is a filmmaker who was raised in Nigeria and Pakistan. She lensed her third feature film; I’LL MEET YOU THERE, a family drama about a Muslim cop and his teenage ballerina daughter. The project was a Film Independent writer/director lab project. She was 1 of 15 directors invited to Cinefondation’s L’Atelier at Cannes 2019 for her feature project WAKHRI (ONE OF A KIND), based on a social media star in Pakistan. Bilal is currently actively looking to direct TV and is also developing TV projects set in the US, UK, and South Asia. Her past noted feature-length works include Josh (Against The Grain), Pakistan’s first film to be on Netflix and in the permanent selection at the US Library of Congress, and The Ph.D. Movie: Still in Grad School. An avid public speaker and activist, she just wrapped a four-year term as co-chair of the Asian American Writer’s Committee at the WGA. She is an active board member for the Caltech Y, a leading community service organization affiliated with her alma mater, the California Institute of Technology. Bilal initiated the Pakistani Oscar committee and is the founder of Pakistan’s first professional screenwriting lab (QALAMBAAZ). She is a Thomas J Watson, Women In Film, Film Independent, and CAPE fellow and an active member of the Alliance of Women Directors and Film Fatales, both organizations vested for fair representation of female directors in the entertainment industry.

Lagueria Davis graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2007 with a BFA in Media Art. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Davis graduated in 1996 and found herself a freshman at OU, double majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Three years and three internships later, her need to create consumed her, and she left the engineering program and landed at the School of Art. Since graduating, Davis has established herself as an award-winning filmmaker. MAID OF DISHONOR a feature she co-wrote was a 2016 Nicholls Fellowship Quarter-Finalist and was a quarter finalist in the 2015 WeScreenplay Competitions. REMEMBER ME a pilot Davis wrote was a semi-finalist 2016 WeScreenplay TV Competition. In addition, in 2013 THIS IS NOT A LOVE STORY, a feature script and in 2016 LIGHT IN DARK PLACES a short script placed in the Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition. 2018 was a big year for Davis as she completed the short film LIGHT IN DARK PLACES and began production on her feature documentary, BLACK BARBIE, which was selected for the Big Sky Pitch forum, WIF/Women at Sundance Financing Intensive, and was showcased at STORY in Nashville.