Producer Jenna Edwards on Budgeting, Landing Celebrities, and Surviving Trauma

The first feature film Jenna Edwards produced was April Showers, a film that explores a Columbine-like school shooting from the perspective of the survivors. The film lacked the resources of a big Hollywood production, but Jenna and her colleagues were able to bring in a full SWAT team and some notable names like Tom Arnold. The film was directed by a survivor of Columbine and was the first feature to shoot with the DALSA, one of the early digital cinema cameras that could shoot at 4K resolution.

Each of those details would be noteworthy on its own, but they’re more impressive together and  a testament to Jenna’s abilities as a producer.

Jenna was one of the first producers to embrace online distribution through platforms like Hulu and iTunes. Since April Showers, Jenna has worked on a variety of projects including the music documentary Unsigned and the talk-show Wake Up! In addition to her work as a producer, Jenna co-hosted the Film Method podcast and offers budgeting and coaching services to filmmakers.

People that think of producing as making the movie are missing 50 percent of what producing is.” – Jenna Edwards

Jenna came on The nsavides Podcast to discuss

• How we can get stars involved in our projects even when we don’t have a big budget
• One way to get a SWAT team to donate their services
• Why Jenna became a producer after getting a part on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• The ways that trauma can impede collaboration and what she did to overcome it
• Who should be involved in the pre-production process of a film
• Why budgets can be works of art and how to budget for success

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