March 22, 2004
By Corinna Sager
This has been an amazing year for our local chapter. First of all, I’d like to welcome our many new members, including three national commercial members from ABCNEWS Videosource. Welcome to MCA-I NY! We hope to see you at one of our upcoming events soon. Remember, the more we see of you, the more we’ll remember you. That’s the success of our organization: networking — and of course education.
This year has been an especially productive one, and there are still two more exciting events ahead: Revealed: An Inside Look at the UN, in April, and our all-day conference in May, Digital Communication: New Business Applications, which will be held at the Reuters 3XSQ Conference Center, right in the heart of Times Square. Then in June we will certainly deserve to party, and we will — with another one of our famous wrap parties. Don’t miss out on these exciting events!
Since the 2003-2004 season began in September, our chapter has had a very busy year. Our expert communications chair, Linda Lopez, led the overhaul of our chapter’s website. Take a look at www.mcainy.org.
If you have HTML skills, please contact Linda. We look to members to help us maintain our communication efforts. We also need writers for the newsletters. If there are any writers out there, why not join our team, get published, and have your name out there to 1,000-plus professionals in the Tri-state area? Free exposure doesn’t come around that often.
We’ve already had four successful seminars this year. In October, Carol Nadel, president of Selective Casting, Jim Sofranko, an international DoP, and I presented the secrets to successful international and multi-lingual productions. Q&A was so intense that we went thirty minutes longer than our regularly scheduled time.
In November, Julia Bengis, our membership chair, produced the follow-up to our May 2003 Wi-Fi seminar. We looked at the current state of the Wi-Fi industry as well as related industries, with Michael Pozapalidis from Verizon, Craig Plunkett from CEDX, and Jennifer Walzer from Back Up My Info (see related stories by Craig and Jennifer).
February saw our 2nd Annual Underdog Film Festival, screening this year’s Oscar-nominated short documentaries. MCA-I NY and Lisa Yapp, our film critic and the originator of the event, pulled off an amazing show with a filmmakers panel and press reports about the festival in The New York Times, Time Out NY, and the New York Post, among others (see the lead story in this issue). From 60 people at last year’s event, the festival more than quadrupled its attendance to almost 300 people this year! It just goes to show you what is possible. Lisa came to MCA-I NY with the idea. If any of you have ideas for seminars or events, let me know.
And just this past Wednesday, more than 60 people came to Earth2Mars to find out about applying for grants. Where Is the Money? drew a diverse mix of people — from independent filmmakers to corporate communications managers and lawyers. Everyone had a question. For those of you who couldn’t make it but would like to find out more, panelist Judith Bro has provided handouts that you can download.
As the season nears its end, we’re gathering more momentum. Don’t miss our April program, Revealed: An Inside Look at the UN, and our all-day conference, Digital Communication: New Business Applications. Keep an eye out for our email announcements, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me anytime at corinna.sager@lifestyleintl.com.
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Corinna Sager
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