Hello,
I’m Mel
I spent over a decade in New York City working across every side of the story: finding it, reporting it, producing it, directing it, supervising it, distributing it, leading teams to make more of it.
The goal has always been the same: make human stories land as a feeling, no matter how big or small the screen.
Early on, that meant creating a long-form documentary series shot entirely on phones for NowThis, a viral news outlet reaching millions on social. It won an Edward R. Murrow Award and became our first HBO pilot. At The New Yorker, the same goal found a filmmaking home: curating and producing the magazine’s Oscar-winning documentary series, leading a team of filmmakers, running award campaigns, and directing short films of my own. A move into branding came next, showing me how much creative possibility opens up when a story moves through an organization instead of a newsroom.
Every one of those roles hit the same wall: the vision for the story was often bigger than the resources to tell it well.
Now, as founder of fwd slash studio, I’m building around those old constraints by introducing AI to the production process; making cinematic storytelling that evokes real feeling more accessible to people building things with heart.
