Breaking Into...Filmaking -- In this episode Ncredible Network & Black Hollywood Live host Derrial Christon interview Founder and Executive Director for The Hollywood Black Film Festival. Tanya Kersey is pas­sion­ate about teach­ing aspir­ing, begin­ning and sea­soned film­mak­ers how to mas­ter the busi­ness of suc­cess­ful moviemak­ing so they can share their vision with the world, become the dar­ling of the film fes­ti­val cir­cuit, see their film on the big screen, and make a liv­ing doing what they love. While being wildly known as “The Filmmaker’s Career Coach,” Tanya is proba­bly best known as the Founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Hol­ly­wood Black Film Fes­ti­val (HBFF) which she launched in 1998. Through the film fes­ti­val, Tanya has helped dis­cover and launch the careers of nearly 1,000 inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers from over 25 coun­tries around the world. She has also cre­ated com­ple­men­tary plat­forms to show­case and develop film­mak­ers’ projects — the Info­tain­ment Con­fer­ence, the HBFF Cin­ema Lounge, the HBFF Screen­ing Series, the HBFF Film Finance & Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sum­mit, and the HBFF Sto­ry­teller Competition. Named an Urban Hol­ly­wood Mover and Shaker by Daily Vari­ety, Tanya also runs The Kersey Group, a bou­tique film con­sult­ing firm that works with indi­vid­u­als, busi­nesses, orga­ni­za­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and gov­ern­ment agen­cies. The con­sul­tancy offers a broad range of ser­vices includ­ing enter­tain­ment and indie film con­sult­ing, film devel­op­ment, script analy­sis, film busi­ness and mar­ket­ing plans, social media strate­gies, dis­tri­b­u­tion strate­gies, and event pro­duc­tion (film fes­ti­vals, con­fer­ences and workshops). Prior to the film fes­ti­val and con­sult­ing firm, Tanya was the founder and CEO of the enter­tain­ment indus­try trade pub­li­ca­tion, Black Tal­ent New and its com­pan­ion web­site, BlackTalentNews.com. As a well-known enter­tain­ment jour­nal­ist, she cov­ered a vari­ety of high-profile events such as the Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys, Indie Spirit Awards, SAG Awards, BET Awards, People’s Choice Awards, and the NAACP Image Awards. Tanya con­ducted count­less celebrity inter­views with such lumi­nar­ies as Oscar win­ners Halle Berry, Jen­nifer Hud­son, Jamie Foxx, Mor­gan Free­man and Mo’Nique, as well as Samuel L. Jack­son, Ice Cube, and Angela Bas­sett. And she was fre­quently seen review­ing films on Reelz Channel’s “Reelz in the Round,” and talk­ing about celebrity lives on the Biog­ra­phy Channel’s “Famous.” Finally, Tanya was a sta­ple on “Samm Brown for the Record” on KPFK as a con­trib­u­tor and co-host, and she pro­duced and hosted the pop­u­lar Inter­net radio show, “Inside Urban Hollywood.” Tanya is a pop­u­lar pub­lic speaker and work­shop leader who has spo­ken for the Whar­ton School at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia, the Birm­ing­ham Busi­ness Alliance, Busi­ness­wire, Con­gres­sional Black Cau­cus Leg­isla­tive Con­fer­ence, Colum­bia Col­lege, Writ­ers Boot Camp Diver­sity Busi­ness Brunch, the Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Film Financ­ing, and Show­biz Expo, to name just a few. Tanya recently launched a pod­cast, Reel Talk with Tanya, which fea­tures inter­views and top­i­cal dis­cus­sions on the busi­ness of mak­ing suc­cess­ful inde­pen­dent films from peo­ple “in the know”. She is also the author of two forth­com­ing books, THE MOVIE MAKING MANUAL:How to Con­vert Your Film­mak­ing Pas­sion Into Prof­its and THE STRATEGIC FILMMAKER: How to Sus­tain, a Lucra­tive and Long-term film­mak­ing Career. Tanya says she loves help­ing film­mak­ers get started on the road to Hol­ly­wood suc­cess, grow­ing their careers and sell­ing their films, by shar­ing her knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence. “When I was start­ing out, I didn’t have any­one to show me the ropes so I learned by trial and error, wast­ing lots of time and thou­sands of dol­lars. The good news is, you don’t have to. I’m here to share my years of knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence to guide and direct you towards mak­ing the right moves, the right way, so you can achieve the career suc­cess you’ve been dream­ing of.”

• published: 25 Jul 2014
• views: 497