WFTV Q&A: In conversation with the team behind Framing Britney Spears

The meteoric rise and disturbing fall of Britney Spears has devolved into a Kafkaesque court battle that has reawakened her fandom and raised pressing questions about mental health and an individuals' rights. Produced by The New York Times and Left/Right and released on Sky Documentaries in the UK, the new documentary Framing Britney Spears re-examines her career and offers a new assessment of the movement rallying against her court-mandated conservatorship, capturing the unsavoury dimensions of the American pop-star machine.

In this WFTV event live from New York and LA, Director Samantha Stark, Senior Story Editor Liz Day and Executive Producer Mary Robertson will discuss the experience and process of making Framing Britney Spears, unpacking some of the editorial and ethical challenges and addressing the immense public response to the film. Chaired by VICE UK Executive Editor Zing Tsjeng.

Event Schedule:

18:55: Please join the webinar waiting room

19:00: Panellists in conversation

19:45: Attendee Q&A opens

20:00: Finish

The series is directed by Samantha Stark directs and Liz Day is the senior story editor. Jason Stallman, Sam Dolnick, Stephanie Preiss from The New York Times, and Ken Druckerman, Banks Tarver and Mary Robertson from Left/Right, all serve as executive producers. Nicki McDermott acquired the title on behalf of Sky.

Samantha Stark is a producer/director on The New York Times Presents, a television show from The New York Times, airing on FX and Hulu. Previously, she was a producer/director for The Weekly. She previously worked as a staff video journalist at The Times, where she shot and edited short documentaries and video series.

Stark is a national Emmy award winner and a Peabody award finalist. Her work has been recognized by awards from World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International and The National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism contest. Before joining The Times in 2012, she was an associate producer on The New Black, a feature documentary, and a freelance cinematographer and editor. She also taught video storytelling at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Liz Day is an Emmy Award-winning journalist. Currently, she works as a senior story editor at The New York Times, most recently helping to create the Framing Britney Spears documentary that aired on FX and Hulu. In 2018, Liz was tapped to become part of the core team creating The Times’s first documentary television series. Before that, Liz joined Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in its first season, and worked for four years as a senior news producer.

Previously, Liz was the director of research at ProPublica, the investigative reporting nonprofit. While there, Liz reported a PBS Frontline documentary on cell tower worker safety and a NPR investigation into how the maker of TurboTax lobbies against free, easy tax filing. Liz also worked at ABC’s investigative unit and at NBC Universal. 

Mary Robertson is an Emmy Award-winning showrunner and director. Presently she works as the showrunner of The New York Times Presents, the anthology documentary series from the New York Times, Left/Right, FX and Hulu.  

Before her work on The New York Times Presents, Mary helped create and executive produce The Weekly, whose first season garnered nine Emmy nominations and four wins. Prior to that Mary created, directed and executive produced the award-winning all-archival limited series Tricky Dick for CNN, directed and produced the feature documentary Trumped and helped develop and executive produce the inaugural season of Showtime’s doc series on the Presidential election The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth. Mary directed, produced and wrote five films for Frontline on PBS, two of which received Emmy nominations.

Earlier credits include multiple stories produced for This American Life, the SXSW award-winning digital series She’s the Ticket, the short doc Missed Connections, and dozens of hours of non-fiction television for PBS, History, Discovery and AMC networks.  

Zing Tsjeng is VICE UK Executive Editor and a journalist, presenter and author. Her four-book series Forgotten Women explores the untold stories of inspiring women who have been marginalised from history. She presents the BBC Sounds podcast United Zingdom and the Vice World News video series Empires of Dirt.

How will the online event work?

This event will be live streamed via Zoom.us. Viewing details will be sent via your confirmation.

Live stream participants will not be visible to others and you will be muted throughout the session. After the talk, there will be an opportunity for audience members to ask their questions to the panel by using the Q&A feature.

This event is for existing WFTV members only.

If you are not a member and would like to join, membership costs just £100 + VAT/yr, please click here or email admin@wftv.org.uk

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