ALEX PEARSON

Having graduated as a director from the London Film School, with an award-winning short film, I had hoped to continue a career as a filmmaker, but saddled with debt and an unreliable agent, I eventually had to find more regular work. I was fortunate to have met Julia Short who was marketing director at Verve Pictures and who invited me to intern for her before offering me a full-time position. From there I worked in a number of guises across the sector, from acquisitions to PR and promotions. I went to work at Scion Pictures in development for a while, before making a more concerted effort in sales at Spier Films, Jinga Films and Intandem Films whilst being awarded a place on Film London’s Marketplace course, which included an MBA education at the Cass Film Business course. Following that, I returned to Intandem before working at Revolver, an independent distributor.

Due to a series of personal tragedies, I drifted and considered leaving the film world altogether until last year, when a friend asked me to help him on his feature documentary project. I developed the marketing and sales strategy for the film taking the completed film to a number of markets and selling to many territories. At that stage I wanted to develop the project into a multiplatform enterprise and started work on an interactive website, with ambitions to create an app, similar to Al Gore’s Our Choice but along the theme of media reform. I was granted a place at MEDIA’s Multi Platform Business School, where I continued to develop the model and there was asked to work with Gabriela Isas on the project I have submitted – VICTOR. Over the last few months, we have turned the project’s focus to make it more transmedia and have partnered with some key people. I continue to work for DocFactory on the aforementioned film Shadows of Liberty (www.shadowsofliberty.org), as well as helping other projects develop strategies for self-distribution and marketing.