Freelance Finance: Financial Survival for Filmmakers, Poets, and Other Dreamers with Meryem Ersoz
This workshop is for creatives who are too focused on perfecting their craft and hustling gigs to worry about money. We will examine the basic information you need to build a system to make your money work for you, rather than you working for your money. We'll address questions which are specific to freelance life: Where's my Social Security? How do I manage the feast and famine cycle? What do I need to know to make the jump from saving to investing? How do I optimize my savings?
(Savings?? What savings, I'm a freelance artist, you idiot!)
Come learn a few tricks and talk about things that no one wants to talk about... but everybody needs! This seminar is intended to make this anxiety-provoking topic readily accessible in a fun, open, and honest environment.
Meryem Ersoz has worked in the Colorado film industry for over twenty years. She has produced eight feature films and has worked with many A-list stars and rising stars, including Malcolm Mcdowell, Lily Gladstone, David Arquette, Dean Cain, Luke Wilson, Jessica Alba, and many others. Her most recent production, a short film for the Warner Bros.film anthology series REFRAMED: NEXT GEN NARRATIVES, began streaming on Max in January 2025.
Her narrative work is viewable on her IMDB page: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3230932/
She has also produced and run budgets for national sports television networks and worked in production management for national ad campaigns for Chevy, Toyota, Wendy’s, Zespri, Dish Network, and others.
She came to filmmaking by way of cinematography, so her filmmaking experience is diverse. She was the DIT on Jason Mraz’ music video “93 Million Miles.” She crawled into a sulphur gas cave wearing hazmat gear to shoot a viral video for National Geographic. Her pursuit vehicle company, Blackwing ASL, shot the re-creation of Steve McQueen’s epic BULLITT chase sequence for Discovery Channel. She dragged an original RED ONE into the mud to shoot prehistoric animal bones being pulled from a Snowmass reservoir, for a NOVA special.
There isn’t much in this industry which she hasn’t done.
In addition, Meryem has worked a side hustle in trading and investing since 1995, when online technology for the brokerage industry was brand new and just getting underway. She built this workshop to start a conversation with her fellow freelancers to help advance economic literacy.
Meryem is a founding board member for Women and Film in Colorado and currently serves on its Advisory Board.
