Williamsburg
Three cheers to Williamsburg film producer Natalie Schwan, whose production company Velocity Creatives is working to bring a woman’s perspective to the independent film scene.
The native Arizonan launched her company in Los Angeles in 2015, before moving to Brooklyn the following year, where she has since worked on creating short films and advertisements, while encouraging an environment that lets women’s voices be heard in a male-dominated industry, where just slightly more than a third of producers are women, according to a recent study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
“Being — for lack of a better word — the boss as a woman fosters that kind of environment,” Schwan said. “It’s refreshing for me to bring more women into the films that I make — not that I try to fulfill a quota.”
Last month, she won several silver and bronze Telly Awards for her promotional and branded videos for the activewear brand Patagonia called “Find Your Wild.”
Schwan said that the movie industry is changing for the better, adding that she used to be the only woman on sets when she started out.
“I just did a film that 70 percent of production heads were female,” she said. “I’m trying to foster that community and freelance crew where it’s more easier and approachable for women to be involved.”
She found that — in addition to fair representation — having more women on set leads to a more interesting film too.
“The more women we get on the crew set, the more diverse the movie is,” she said.
— Kevin Duggan
