Audience Development and Distribution Plan

This event took place on Saturday, Mar. 2, 2019 at 10:30 amKDCC - Classroom B

This workshop will outline some of the steps needed to identify, build, reach, and activate audiences for marketing & engagement, starting in development. Festivals and industry conferences present both a challenge and an opportunity for emerging filmmakers to advance their projects. Jeff Chiba Stearns will describe his experience self-distributing his feature film Mixed Match Jeff Chiba Stearns is an animator and documentary filmmaker best known for his feature length documentaries, One Big Hapa Family (2010) and Mixed Match (2016). Stearns, who is of Japanese and European heritage, has been an international spokesperson on mixed-race identity since his 2005 short animated film “What Are You Anyways?”. Born in Kelowna, BC, Stearns studied Film Animation at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, graduating in 2001, and soon after founded Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. in Vancouver. Since then, Stearns’ short animations, such as Yellow Sticky Notes (2007), and feature documentaries have been screened and broadcast around the world in hundreds of film festivals and various major networks, and have won dozens of awards and accolades, including a Webby Award and an Emmy nomination. Stearns describes his animation style as “Hapanimation”, a blend of Japanese and North American styles. Stearns has published articles and lectured around the world about multiracial identity, cultural awareness, filmmaking, animation, and film distribution. He is also a co-founder of the annual Hapa-palooza Festival in Vancouver. More about Jeff Chiba Sterns