LA: Cadillac Presents the IVY Film Innovator Awards

Photo Credit: Rachel Murray/Getty Images for IVY

On Tuesday, August 4^th, IVY, a membership-only collaborative community, hosted its second annual IVY Innovator Film Awards in Los Angeles.

At the Cadillac-presented event, which was held at LA’s Smogshoppe, Seed&Spark Founder & CEO Emily Best was honored with the IVY Innovator Award (she was one of six finalists) for her contributions to the film industry by actor, director and How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor, alongside IVY Founders and Co-CEOs Beri Meric and Philipp Triebel. The IVY Innovator Awards & Event Series is a program designed to showcase and inspire the next generation of leading minds, and represents the joint commitment of Cadillac and IVY in supporting those who embody the best of the innovative American spirit.

Emily was selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide as a leading visionary in the film industry for her role in launching the crowdfunding platform Seed&Spark. The one-stop shop, which was inspired by her experiences in directing her first feature film, Like the Water, allows filmmakers to crowdfund, distribute, and interact with their audience and the broader independent film community.  Emily is touring film and tech festivals around the world as a part of the #StayIndieTour to educate and teach filmmakers best practices in connecting with their audiences to build a sustainable career. Throughout her career, Emily has helped many emerging filmmakers across the nation get their projects off the ground by using the service Seed&Spark to crowdfund, and build their audiences. Since her company launched in December 2012, it has raised $300,000 in feature financing for 17 films.

This year’s finalists included Luke Kelly-Clyne a Writer/Director and Head of Native Video at CollegeHumor/Electus, Elizabeth Dell, producer of B-GIRL, which is featured on Showtime, Encore and Starz networks, Scott Glosserman founder of Gathr, a platform that democratizes theatrical distribution by allowing the movie-goer to ‘pull’ movies to their local theaters, Sean Carey,  an award-winning film producer who has helped launch six digital media startup companies, and Don Napoleon, an Emmy award winning video producer.

The special night concluded with Josh Radnor providing the audience with one final insight, as he noted, “Initiatives like the IVY Innovator Awards make me very optimistic about the endless possibilities for continuing innovation in film and beyond.”

Guests included actress Cadillac’s Michael Patrick, Caitlin Fitzgerald, star of Showtime’s Hit Show Masters of Sex, Jillian Rose Reed, of MTV’s Awkward, actress Renee Olstead, and actress Scout Taylor-Compton.