IndieCon, the leader in entertainment seminars, presents in association with the Catalina Film Festival, a New Media panel featuring some of today’s most successful and knowledgeable New Media producers and filmmakers.
Panelists include Emmy and Streamy award winning writer/producer Mike Rotman, Lionsgate New Media producer Alex Barkaloff and more. Panel moderated by award winning filmmaker and IndieCon Chairman, Marc Clebanoff.www.indiecon.com 

ALEX BARKALOFF has been an Executive Producer for Digital Media at Lionsgate and is responsible for production and global distribution of high impact mobile content from the company’s 12,000 film library and TV show lineup. He is currently overseeing the roll out of Tom Hanks’ highly anticipated animated New Media series Electric City.

 

MIKE ROTMAN is an Emmy Award Nominated writer for his work on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect and  has produced shows such as The Simple Life and South Park.He is the CEO of Streamin’ Garage, a 6 camera Internet TV studio, he’s the Streamy Award winning Co-Executive Producer and Director of Kevin Pollack’s online chat show and currently he is the Head of Production at Big Frame, which boasts over 100 million monthly video views on their YouTube channels.

So you think you’ve got the next animated feature film franchise? Have a favorite childhood book, graphic novel or story that just begs to be shared with the world?    Graphic novels, comic books and classic storybooks can be a great sales tool when pitching your project to movie studios and producers. Come hear the pro’s talk about the journey of adaptation; the behind the scenes challenges of adapting pictures and words from the page, into a fully animated feature film for a major studio.  The real story of what it takes to make a compelling and dynamic animated feature film from the most unlikely and unique sources.  Moderated by Golan Ramras.

MODERATOR BIO:

Golan Ramras is currently the Vice President for Development and Production for Hero Pictures.  Before joining Hero, Ramras worked as the Director of Development at Marvel Studios and Kadokawa Pictures USA, and as the Creative Executive for Doug Liman’s Hypnotic Entertainment. In addition, Ramras is a manager at the Telluride Film Festival, and founded the non-profit IFP Phoenix. Under the IFP banner, Ramras also founded the Phoenix Film Festival, named one of the top ten festivals in the country by Moviemaker Magazine.

PANELIST BIOS:

Berkeley Breathed is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, screenwriter, novelist and one of America’s most popular illustrators.  His comic strip Bloom County ran in 1200 newspapers around the world, its annual collections selling over 8 million copies while it’s breakout star Opus was developed as a feature film for the Weinstein Company.    His NY Times bestselling Mars Needs Moms was recently made into Robert Zemeckis’ now infamous 2011 motion-capture film for Disney.  Currently, his first novel Flawed Dogs is being developed as an animated feature at Dreamworks.  Pete and Pickles at Technicolor will be Breathed’s directing debut.  Meanwhile, millions of Bill the Cat t-shirts continue to clog laundries around the planet.

Alex Schwartz is currently producing the feature film Mr. Peabody & Sherman for Dreamworks Animation where she served as Head of Development at DreamWorks Animation from 2008-2012.  Schwartz has also worked at Touchstone Pictures, Bel Air Entertainment and Walden Media.  Her credits include Sister Act, Romy and Michelle’s High Scholl Reunion, Rushmore, Pay it Forward, Charlotte’s Web and Bridge To Terabithia.

Fonda Snyder is a Producer and President of management company Alchemy Ink, representing a select group of authors and illustrators in the sale of both publishing and underlying entertainment rights to publishers and major film studios. Snyder was also the Co-Founder of Storyopolis, a franchise-oriented family entertainment company encompassing production, book publishing, art gallery, and retail outlets. At Alchemy Ink, she has packaged and sold world rights to the highly publicized NY and LA Times bestselling literary survival memoir Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad. She sold the film rights to Warner Bros. where she will produce.  Snyder has also sold world rights to Hilary Duff’s NY Times Best Selling book series; Elixir, packaged best selling book series Encyclopedia Brown as a graphic novel and feature film and has developed more than 25 projects for major television networks and film studios, including the animated movie “Opus the Penguin” based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Berkeley Breathed’s best known cartoon strip character; the animated feature adapatation of William Joyce’s “Nicholas Cricket” for Sandra Bullock;  Steve Seagle’s (Ben 10 Creator’s)  DC/Vertigo comic book “House Of Secrets”; and a feature film adaptation of Norton Juster’s classic, “The Phantom Tollbooth”.

Joe LeFavi

Joe LeFavi is a producer and entertainment brand strategist who champions cross-platform world-building and the creation of content designed to engage audiences via multiple forms of media. As an energetic guide into the transmedia space, LeFavi launched Quixotic Transmedia as a transmedia consultancy designed to inspire brands to unearth their potential alongside industry pioneers capable of bringing their ideas to life. ixotic collaborators include I Am Rogue, Crest Animation, Lionsgate, Archaia Entertainment, Platinum Studios, The Jim Henson Company, Adhesive Games, DJ2 Entertainment, Kunoichi Media, Imago Interactive, and Panelfly. Publishing credits include Hawken and Immortals for Archaia and over 100+ titles for The Jim Henson Company, most of which he oversaw as their Director of Publishing & Development, a position he proudly held until departing Henson to launch Quixotic in 2010.

Steve Bencich & Ron Friedman

High school pals Ron J. Friedman and Steve Bencich met in Phoenix, AZ as
teenagers.  Their co-writing feature credits include Disney’s
Oscar-nominated, traditionally-animated film “Brother Bear”, CG feature
“Chicken Little”, and Sony Pictures Animation’s CG debut, “Open Season”.
More recently, they worked with Alex Schwartz on Dreamworks’ 2013
animated “Me and My Shadow”.  Friedman & Bencich have written 40+
feature scripts, so if you’re interested in buying one, let them know.
If you’ve made it this far in the bio, congratulations.  Should anyone
at the festival drug you, snatch you off the street, smuggle you into a
secret room, and beat you with a rubber hose, the pass phrase for
instant release is “barnacle”.   No one is saying this will happen for
sure, but, y’know, just in case.  Good luck and enjoy the festival!