Nathan Southern

1236 W. Arthur Ave., Unit 1, Chicago, IL 60626

nsouthern78@gmail.com

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

  • Film/TV Producing
  • Literary Coverage
  • Script Analysis/Advisement
  • Project Development
  • Project Management
  • Pitching
  • Talent Packaging
  • Treatment Authorship
  • Budgeting
  • Festival Curation
  • Rights Licensing
  • Entertainment Marketing & PR

WORK HISTORY

First Generation Films, Toronto, ON, Canada – Jun. 2015-June 2017
Literary Coverage (Freelance)
Reading and writing assessments of novels being considered for option by executive producer Christina Piovesan.

Berkeley Films, Toronto, ON, Canada – Sep. 2015-Dec. 2015
Script Advisement (Freelance)
Read scripts of projects that executive producer/company founder Jonathan Hayes had in active development, and provided detailed written and oral recommendations for improvement of content, including in-depth script restructuring. Projects included a feature and a prospective TV series pilot.

Edyson Entertainment, Santa Monica, CA/Toronto, ON Canada – Jul. 2013-Mar. 2016
Co-Executive-Producer – Longform (Contracted)
Developed various television miniseries projects for network.
-Identified, assessed, and pitched project source material to executive producers Ed Gernon and Alyson Richards.
-Wrote, edited, and revised pitch pages to facilitate progression and network delivery of individual projects; regularly submitted        drafts to two company founders for feedback, clarification, revision, project advancement.
-Cultivated ongoing relationships with rights holders, to facilitate options of literary material.
-Assessed and provided ongoing feedback for successive drafts of treatments upon submission.

Rovi Corporation (formerly All Media Guide), Ann Arbor, MI   – Nov. 2005-Dec. 2014
Content Editor for Movies/Film Critic (Full Time)
Helped transform a major culture website (Allmovie.com) from a local grassroots operation to one of the leading online purveyors of entertainment metadata, with global reach and redefined definition and purpose.
-Wrote over 5,000 synopses and 300 reviews of various films for allmovie.com database, which were then disseminated online via MSN, Best Buy, The New York Times and other outlets. Many of my reviews were syndicated via TV Guide online.
-Authored numerous film essays for Allmovie.com front page blog
-Attended the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT as Rovi’s sole representative critic and publicist.
-Attended the HotDocs Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario as Rovi’s sole representative critic and publicist.
-Attended the RVCQ Film Festival in Montreal, Quebec as Rovi’s sole representative critic and publicist.
–Built ongoing relationships with dozens of publicists and used those relationships to bring in PR material on theatrically-released films. I then vetted and prepped the material for database ingest.
-Helped build and test department’s ‘Search and Recommendations’ engine for films.

Horizons Filmworks, Ann Arbor, MI – 2007-11
Company Founder; Executive Producer, WorldFilms
Worked with WNET-Thirteen (PBS) to develop an anthology series, conceived as a follow-up to Masterpiece Theater. We planned to screen a lost classic of world cinema each week, hosted by Tilda Swinton, with supplements used to break down barriers to multicultural understanding.
-Hand-picked and contractually licensed over 100 features, shorts and documentaries for programming on the series, including movies by Alain Tanner, Krzysztof Zanussi, Walerian Borowczyk, Mrinal Sen and Roger Leenhardt, with the assist of an intellectual property attorney and a team of 27 foreign language interpreters.
-Hired Oscar nominee Tilda Swinton to host (later replaced by Patricia Arquette)
-Supervised production of series press kit, that included publicity stills of individual titles, plus a DVD with promotional montages for series (set to music) and a promo film featuring Swinton, shot at her home in Scotland.
-Compiled an episode layout and production budgets for Season One; given approval by WNET.
-Spent two years working with WNET executives to solicit corporate funding for project; endeavor suspended in the wake of the financial crash, given our joint inability to secure the requisite funds. 

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, NC 2001-2005
Contracted Author (Freelance) : The Films of Louis Malle – A Critical Analysis (Published Nov. 2005) 

Alliance Atlantis Communications, Santa Monica, CA – 2000-2001
Longform Development Executive – TV Movies and Miniseries

EDUCATION
B.S. in Film & Television, Boston University

LANGUAGES
English, French