Wild at Heart | Is Indie Filmmaking Becoming the New Mainstream?
For years, the TV industry thrived in a comfortable bubble, but now the landscape is shifting with fewer commissions and tighter budgets. Could the indie spirit be the key to driving creativity and resilience in this evolving market? This panel delves into the hustle mentality, exploring new financing models, the "less is more" approach, and the fine line between chasing opportunity and risking exploitation.
Speaker
Lucas Ochoa is a producer and executive producer of films and television series. Formerly Chief Creative Officer of Pulse Films, he works now as a producer at House Productions. His credits include Sky’s “Gangs of London”, Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey”, and Robert Eggers’ “The Witch”.
Anthony’s debut feature film “Sunburn”, which he wrote, produced, and directed was commercially released across major VOD channels in North America and Canada (2020), and subsequently in the UK in early 2021, produced by Born Wild.
Currently, Anthony has several TV shows under development including “Hammersmith Nudes”, a UK/Irish venture produced alongside Danu Media, which secured development funds from Screen Ireland in 2021 and has renowned show-runner Brendan Foley attached, as well as Lucio's Treasure' co-produced by Red Arrow International Studios.
Mel Eslyn is a film and television producer, writer and director, and President of Duplass Brothers Productions. Winner of the 2016 Independent Spirit Producer's Award, Eslyn is the veteran producer behind films that include the 2014 Sundance hit “The One I Love”, Clea DuVall's debut “The Intervention”, Lynn Shelton's “Outside In”, Miguel Arteta's “Duck Butter”, Natalie Morales' “Language Lessons”, and Roshan Sethi’s “7 Days”, for which she won her 2nd Spirit Award. In the documentary space Eslyn frequently collaborates with filmmaker Sam Jones, most recently on his HBO features “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off” for which she won the Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Sports Program, and “Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed”. She also produced the award-winning documentary “Not Going Quietly”, which follows the activist and lawyer Ady Barkan as he embarks on a national campaign for healthcare reform. On the smaller screen, her narrative television producing credits include HBO's “Room 104” on which she also frequently wrote and directed, and the breakout HBO comedy "Somebody Somewhere", which was named an AFI Television Program of the Year in its 1st season and won a Peabody Award in its 2nd.
Her documentary series credits include the Independent Spirit Award-nominated docu-series “The Lady and the Dale, the Hulu series “Sasquatch”, and Netflix's “American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murderers”. Last year Eslyn released her narrative feature directorial debut “Biosphere”, starring Sterling K. Brown and Mark Duplass, after a well-received premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. Most recently she co-created the series “Penelope” with Mark Duplass, on which she acted as both showrunner and director. The series will be released in the US on September 24 on Netflix. Additional upcoming releases include the Hulu true-crime series “Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal”, the horror series “The Creep Tapes”, and season 3 of “Somebody Somewhere”, all out this fall.