Master Class: Launching and Managing Your Creative Business with Financial Expert Amy Smith
About this Master Class
Master Classes are in-depth, interactive learning experiences focused on craft and career building and led by renowned industry experts. Topics include fiction and documentary filmmaking, TV writing and production, and navigating and succeeding in the entertainment industry.
Understanding the basic elements and essential steps for launching a creative business is key to securing the financial well-being of every filmmaker's career and the stability of your current and future projects. Educator and artist Amy Smith unveils the best entrepreneurial practices and tips that will prepare you to launch and maintain a successful creative business. This session is useful for filmmakers and artists regardless of discipline and career stage.
Topics covered include:
00:00 - Welcome and introduction from Sundance Collab
02:40 - Introduction from Amy Smith
09:46 - Building your team, working with collaborators
15:18 - Employees vs. independent contractors
23:31 - Q&A
36:11 - Business entity types
46:56 - Business entity decision/inflection
50:49 - Tax implications of entity types
1:03:56 - Q&A
1:28:50 - Business planning for creatives
1:45:33 - Financial management skills
1:54:45 - Q&A
2:10:26 - Valuing your time
2:21:51 - Q&A
2:38:51 - Final Announcements
Past classes have included Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams on Documentary Storytelling, Finding Dory’s Victoria Strouse on Comedy Writing, Emmy-nominated director Lesli Linka Glatter on Blocking a Scene, The Walking Dead’s Glen Mazzara on TV Writing, and more.
Resources:
Download the list of RESOURCES from Amy Smith and Sundance Collab
Master ClassTeam
Amy Smith
Instructor
Amy Smith (she/her) is a dance and theater artist, educator, and facilitator. She works to dismantle oppressive structures and empower artists through financial well-being workshops, one-on-one work with artists giving financial advice and doing tax preparation, co-facilitating anti-racism sessions, and as a dance and theater educator. Amy co-founded, co-directed, and performed with Headlong, a dance theater non-profit that transformed into a community arts organization over 25 years. She left Headlong in 2019 to pursue her freelance work. She leads financial well-being workshops through Creative Capital, Assets for Artists, and in many other settings.
Patty West
Moderator | Director, Collab Courses & Events
Patty West is a producer and educator based in California. She led the Directing Workshop for Women and the Thesis Program at the American Film Institute prior to joining the Sundance Institute. She came to Sundance Collab in December of 2019 and now serves as its Director.
West is a Chicago native and holds a B.S. from Northwestern University, an M.F.A. from the AFI Conservatory and an Executive M.B.A. from Quantic School of Business & Technology. She is a member of the Producer's Council of the Producers Guild of America.