Ze Frank, President, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures

Ze Frank, President, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures
Ze Frank is the President of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, overseeing all moving image content spanning the gamut from an animated GIF to a feature film. Frank joined BuzzFeed in September 2012 as the Executive Vice President of Video where he spent the early days of BuzzFeed Video focusing on finding new formats in social video. A web pioneer since 2001, Frank is known for creating viral projects like “Earth Sandwich,” “Young Me/Now Me,” and “Chillout Song.” In 2006, he created “The Show with Ze Frank,” which was an early template for the modern video blog, and he recently relaunched a video blog called “A Show with Ze Frank” with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign. He has been named a top virologist in Newsweek’s Digital Power Index, and his website was listed as one of Time’s “50 Coolest Websites.” He is also a frequent TED talk speaker and a Webby Award winner.

Moderator: Dawn Chmielewski, Senior Editor, Mobile, Re/code
Dawn Chmielewski covers mobile, devices and digital media computing for Re/code from the Los Angeles area. She is a veteran journalist, most recently at the Los Angeles Times, where she worked for eight years as an entertainment writer responsible for covering two of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. (now 21st Century Fox). More recently, she has turned her attention to digital media — profiling new players shaking up the Hollywood status quo. Chmielewski’s reporting about the Hollywood talent agencies led to a multi-part series about pedophiles working in the entertainment industry. These articles set the stage for a change in California law to require background checks for managers, publicists and others with unsupervised access to child actors. Prior to the Times, she worked as a technology reporter and personal technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, where she chronicled Apple’s renaissance and the rise of file sharing networks. Chmielewski also previously worked at the Orange County Register, the Patriot Ledger and the Watertown Daily Times. She graduated from Utica College of Syracuse University.

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