No Film School Expands Coverage with New Staff, Actual Office

This is a day I've been looking forward to for a long time: the beginning of a new era at NFS. Please welcome Liz, Jon, and Emily — and let us know what you'd like to see more of on the site!

"It has never been more expensive to go to film school, and it has never been cheaper to make a film." This is a point I've made often regarding the increasing relevance of free and inexpensive educational film resources. But here at NFS we have rarely had the resources to do everything we want to be doing. We've always known that to fulfill the mission of this site, we were going to have to be patient, grow organically, and staff up when the opportunity finally presented itself. So I'm excited to be adding new people and new facilities! This will allow us to bolster our coverage in several areas and expand our offerings in the video, audio, educational, and community departments. 

The No Film School site as you know it today began when I launched it as a daily resource in 2010, but it actually started out as my personal blog five years earlier — so this site has been around, in one form or another, for over ten years (!). For years, I wrote all of the posts myself, then hired additional writers, relaunched with a new design in 2014, and now we've moved into a physical office and brought on board actual staff (to date, we have been a distributed workforce working wherever, whenever). Befitting our independent nature, we have set up shop in a building in downtown Brooklyn, New York, right in between two of Brooklyn's foremost arts organizations, BAM and BRIC. 

Moving into an office is important, but not as important as our new people! So I'm very pleased to introduce our new staff: Liz Nord, Emily Buder, and Jon Fusco.

Liz Nord, Editor-in-Chief & Lead Producer

Liz Nord has been producing news, documentary, and multi-platform projects for over a decade, including an Emmy win for running the MTV News presidential campaign coverage in 2008. She has also written for several film-related outlets, most recently covering transmedia for PBS's POV Docs blog, and has spoken at events like SXSW and TEDxDumbo. In 2003, she used money that could have gone towards film school to buy a Sony VX2000 camcorder and shoot her first feature doc, Jericho's Echo: Punk Rock in the Holy Land. She is a producer on the in-progress transmedia documentary Jerusalem Unfiltered.

At NFS, Liz will be overseeing our editorial direction, expanding our coverage to new areas and formats, and regularly writing posts and hosting podcasts. Drawing on her background in production, Liz will also be overseeing new multimedia/interactive/educational initiatives. You can reach Liz at liz@nofilmschool.com.

Emily Buder, Managing Editor & Head of Community

Emily Buder joins us from Indiewire, where she managed all of Indiewire's social media accounts, interviewed hundreds of filmmakers, and wrote and edited articles. Before that, she was the Creative Executive at a production company in NYC. She went to (dunh dunh dunh) film school at NYU.

At NFS, Emily will be contributing editorial oversight, daily posts, and interviews; managing our Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts; and helping manage and refresh our Boards, which we are excited to improve for the community with updated functions and better organization. You can reach Emily at emily@nofilmschool.com. 

Jon Fusco, Multimedia Producer/Editor

Jon Fusco is also joining us from Indiewire, where he edited podcasts, built out the video hub/strategy, and edited supercuts that ran in conjunction with Indiewire articles. He studied acting at NYU and is now a filmmaker.

At NFS, Jon will be producing, recording, and editing content for our recently-launched podcast channel, as well as editing video and contributing posts and interviews. You can reach Jon at fusco@nofilmschool.com. 

The rest of us aren't going anywhere

I'm shifting to a slightly different title of Founding Editor & Publisher, but I will still be contributing posts and podcasts, overseeing certain aspects of our overall direction, and running things from a product and publishing standpoint. However, I've got a feature film to make — finally — with Netflix announcing they're financing and distributing AMATEUR. So pretty soon I'll have a lot more "lessons learned" to share... I couldn't be more excited about where the site is headed with this capable New York-based team joining our existing writers and editors, who are writing posts (and making films) coast-to-coast.

Some of the changes afoot won't be immediately noticeable, but know that we're working hard behind-the-scenes to make this the leading worldwide community “by filmmakers, for filmmakers.” And as always (but especially during this time of transition) we'd love to hear from you about what you want to see more of. Like many of our film careers — my own included — we're just getting started.