Writer-director Craig Whitney and producer Estefanía Bonilla Hernández have been invited to present a panel on The Podcast to Feature Film Development Pipeline at the SIE Society’s 2026 Impact + Profit Conference in December at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center in Los Angeles.
The panel will draw on the duo’s experience creating The Red Note and La Nota Roja podcasts and developing The Red Note feature film. Joining them at the SIE conference will be Claire Cornetta and Lisa Nwankwo, co-founders and principals of Carrot Impact, who will moderate the conversation.
About The Red Note‘s SIE Conference Panel
Whitney and Bonilla Hernández’s The Podcast to Feature Film Development Pipeline panel at the Impact + Profit Conference will explore The Red Note‘s journey from feature film screenplay to bilingual true crime podcast, and how the podcast helped advance the development of The Red Note movie.
After beginning life as a film project, Whitney and Bonilla Hernández were presented with the opportunity to develop their project into a true crime podcast with Imperative Entertainment.
The resulting podcasts, The Red Note and La Nota Roja, reached #1 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify in 13 countries and were named by Forbes as one of the top 25 true crime podcasts of all time. That success helped to both accelerate the feature’s development and build a global community of potential viewers around the project.
Using The Red Note as a case study, the panel will look at how filmmakers can use podcasting to build and measure an audience before a frame of their movie is shot to help advance the development and financing of feature film projects.
In addition to moderating the panel, Claire Cornetta and Lisa Nwankwo of Carrot Impact, previously of Participant Media, will also speak to how the audiences that feature filmmakers build through podcasts projects can be used to build cultural momentum around a film before it reaches screens, and re-engaged during distribution to provide a built-in audience for its theatrical or streaming release.
The SIE Society’s Impact + Profit Conference will take place on December 7 and 8, 2026 at USC’s Annenberg Center in Los Angeles, California. The exact date and time for The Podcast to Feature Film Development Pipeline will be announced with the full conference schedule. Tickets for the two-day conference can be purchased online through the SIE Society’s website.
About the SIE Society
The SIE Society is a global alliance dedicated to Social Impact Entertainment, a field it defines as storytelling that is consciously aware of its potential effect on audiences and uses that awareness to drive positive change on social issues.
Founded in 2020 by Robert Rippberger and Tobias Deml, who grew it out of their organization Cinema of Change in partnership with the Producers Guild of America’s Social Impact Entertainment Task Force, the SIE Society works to educate, connect, and empower professionals across entertainment, the nonprofit world, and business. Its members span film festivals, universities, production companies, NGOs, and advocates working across every media platform.
About the Impact + Profit Conference
Now in its fourth year, the Impact + Profit Conference challenges a long-held industry assumption: that storytellers must choose between making a difference and making a profit. Co-presented by the SIE Society and the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, the conference shows attendees how to build a “double bottom line” into their projects while connecting them with producers, financiers, and storytellers who specialize in impact.
The 2026 edition moves to the new Annenberg Center at USC, carrying forward the legacy of the Soap Summits of the 1990s that helped bring public health and social issues into television storytelling. Over two days, more than 250 attendees will take part in 30+ panels and workshops and six networking sessions. This year’s speakers include USC Annenberg Dean Willow Bay, entertainment-education pioneer Miguel Sabido, Geena Davis Institute President and CEO Madeline Di Nonno, writer and executive producer Mark Goffman, and Cecilie Fjellhøy of Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler, among many others.