Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Autumn Federici. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Autumn, thanks for joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
The Ninth House officially launched in 2017 but Jake Helgren and I started tossing around the idea in December of 2016. I was 9 months pregnant, that’s always a great time to start a business – right? We were working on our 2nd film together but you would’ve thought we were on 10! We were already a well-oiled machine still are.
I think we are getting close to the 50 film mark! Up until Covid we were shooting 5-7 films a year. Since 2020 we are averaging 8-10 a year. It’s a lot of work. We do it all in house – conception to delivery, and a lot of times we handle marketing as well.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a producer. That’s a term a lot of people throw around, I know. Basically, I do it all. From start to finish I have my hands in every aspect of film-making. If something goes awry, it’s on me to fix it. My days are normally 10-12 hours long and I’m normally on 3-4 projects at a time. Nightly, I sneak away to get snuggle bunny time in with my kids. I’m surrounded by the best crew that makes sure I’m out of the door in time! The Ninth House is a family which is rare in our industry. That’s the one aspect of our company I’m the most proud of. It’s amazing to complete a film but it’s even better when you’re surrounded by good people,
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
On set Producing taught me I could overcome anything. Our typical shooting schedule is 12-14 days. You can’t deviate from the plan. Once crew, talent, locations, trailers, vehicles, props, costumes, are booked – you’re committed. You can’t pause in the middle. You don’t have the luxury of sitting on a scenario for days. Every small mistake could cost you the film. We can’t reschedule for weather either. Outdoor scenes are re-written within the hour and moved indoors. One film we had both bad weather and a difficult cast. For the entire shoot, we weren’t able to get one thing shot before lunch! I still have PTSD from the shoot. That movie taught me to persevere and keep moving no matter what. I’m not sure how but we still had a enough footage to make a movie and it came out great!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
We could have a movie ready to go but because another movie, not scheduled at that time, is more relevant to what is going on in life, you find that you have to pivot and move entire films in front of each other to make sure that you’re taking advantage of every given opportunity to surprise and delight your audience. I try and touch base with distributors, networks, streamers, investors, on a quarterly basis to see where the market is heading and if pivoting is our best option. Our goal is to make the film and get it out to the public within a year.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ninthhousefilms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ninthhousefilms/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ninthhousefilms/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/autumn-federici-83779a17
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/NinthHouseFilms
Image Credits
Lifetime and The Ninth House