The Video Consortium

New York City, USA (founded) · Global · 15+ local hubs across US, Latin America, Europe, South Asia, and Africa

Overview

The Video Consortium (VC) is the world's largest nonprofit community network for nonfiction filmmakers and video journalists — a global organization that connects documentary producers, visual reporters, cinematographers, editors, and nonfiction content creators through a combination of grassroots local hubs, professional training, production fellowships, and industry-wide convenings. It was founded in 2015 by Sky Dylan-Robbins during her time as Senior Producer of Video at The New Yorker, beginning with what she has described as a gathering of about a dozen video industry leads in New York City on a winter evening — a deliberately informal starting point for what has grown into an organization with more than 7,000 vetted members, 15-plus local hubs spanning four continents, and funders including the MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

The Video Consortium occupies a distinct and necessary position in the journalism and documentary ecosystem: it is a professional community organization rather than a news outlet, a production company, or a grant-making foundation — but it performs functions that none of those institutions can perform, connecting individual creators who would otherwise be isolated freelancers or siloed newsroom employees with a global community of peers, shared resources, and collaborative opportunities. Its founding premise, as Dylan-Robbins has articulated it, is that video is the dominant medium of public communication in the contemporary world, that the people who produce nonfiction video with integrity and craft are chronically undersupported and underconnected, and that building the community infrastructure for those creators is itself a form of journalism investment as significant as any single production.

Founding: Sky Dylan-Robbins and the New York Beginning

Sky Dylan-Robbins (born January 14, 1989, New York City) graduated cum laude from Northwestern University with a junior year studying cinema at the University of Bologna. She began her career at Tumblr as its editorial video lead — working with journalist Jessica Bennett and media executive Chris Mohney to cover subcultures, news, and trends for the platform's Storyboard online magazine, partnering with Time and WNYC. She then joined The New Yorker as Senior Producer of Video, where she created and commissioned the magazine's first short films, series, and video supplements for print features — a role that placed her at the intersection of literary journalism and documentary filmmaking and gave her a clear view of both the creative potential and the institutional fragility of video journalism at a moment when legacy publishers were still figuring out what nonfiction video could mean for their editorial identity.

It was during her time at The New Yorker that Dylan-Robbins founded the Video Consortium in 2015, recognizing a gap she experienced firsthand: talented video journalists and nonfiction filmmakers were scattered across newsrooms, production companies, and freelance arrangements, with no shared community, no peer-to-peer infrastructure for sharing rates information or best practices, and no organized space for the kind of mutual support and creative cross-pollination that sustains other craft communities. The first VC gathering was deliberately low-key — a social event at the back of an East Village venue that brought together about twelve people from across New York's video journalism landscape. The response was immediate enough to suggest that the community was genuinely missing something.

Dylan-Robbins subsequently moved to NBC News as a visual journalist producing documentaries and news segments across digital, broadcast, and streaming verticals, before leaving to lead the Video Consortium full time. Forbes Magazine named her a 30 Under 30 media entrepreneur; DOC NYC, America's largest documentary festival, selected her as a Documentary New Leader. Her own documentary work includes On Our Own Island, a film about her parents' relationship — described as a timeless love story chronicling the relationship from its romantic beginnings through life's final moments — which she produced and directed.

Community and Local Hubs

The Video Consortium's geographic footprint is built around its local hub model — city-level communities led by filmmaker-organizers who host regular gatherings, workshops, screenings, and co-working sessions tailored to the needs of local storytellers. New York City, where VC began, is the organizational home. Hubs now operate across the United States — including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC, Miami, Nashville, Birmingham, and others — and internationally in cities including Mexico City, Caracas, Berlin, and cities in South Asia and Africa. The Bay Area hub, for example, launched in July 2017 and has met regularly since. The Berlin hub launched in 2024. Each hub is led by a team of local filmmaker-organizers who are themselves members of the VC community rather than staff of the central organization, giving the model a genuinely grassroots character that distinguishes it from chapter systems run from a headquarters.

The hubs are complemented by the national Press Play tour, which convenes local media communities in regions across the United States to connect storytellers with each other and with local newsrooms, funders, and distributors — building the regional infrastructure for nonfiction video journalism that the hub model provides at the city level.

Programs

Annual Convening

Future of Nonfiction Video (FONV)

A three-day annual forum at Columbia Journalism School, powered by Knight Foundation, gathering thought leaders and makers in nonfiction visual media to discuss the industry's most pressing challenges and opportunities. Combines panels, workshops, screenings, and networking. The central industry event in the VC calendar.

National Tour

Press Play

VC's ongoing US regional tour — convening local media communities in cities and regions across the country to shape an interconnected future for video creators and local audiences. Connects filmmakers with newsrooms, funders, and distributors in specific regional markets.

Newsroom Program · Launched 2025

Newsroom Collective

Launched January 2025 with Knight Foundation support, expanding VC's work directly into local newsrooms — helping news organizations build sustainable, holistic video strategies. Led by Brandon Graves (formerly 13News Now), Kamaria Roberts (formerly PBS, McClatchy, American Press Institute), and Andy Pergam (board chair; formerly Meta, The Washington Post, McClatchy).

Mentorship

Advisory Circles

A grassroots mentorship program connecting emerging nonfiction filmmakers and journalists with more experienced practitioners to develop projects and build professional networks.

Fellowship

Global Mentorship Initiative

A mentorship program for first-time documentary feature filmmakers — supporting creators making their first feature-length nonfiction work through structured guidance and community connection.

Production Fellowship

Solutions Storytelling Project

A production fellowship and incubator supporting documentary filmmakers to produce short films focused on solutions journalism — 16 short documentaries across Latin America in 2024 and 16 across Asia in 2025, with robust training and career resources for directing filmmakers.

Industry Data

VC Rate Survey

A community-driven database on industry rates and trends — one of the most practically useful resources VC provides for freelance creators, who often lack the institutional context to negotiate fair compensation.

Trauma and Safety

Resilience and Safety Symposium

A virtual symposium exploring resilience, safety, and trauma for those working in video journalism and documentary film — addressing the occupational health dimensions of covering conflict, injustice, and human suffering as a visual journalist.

Advisory Service

VC Studios

VC's advisory and production arm for organizations — businesses, nonprofits, news organizations — seeking to build or strengthen their video strategies. Connects clients with VC's network of vetted nonfiction video professionals.

The Problem VC Addresses

The Video Consortium was founded against the backdrop of a structural crisis in video journalism that has deepened since 2015: as newsrooms shifted toward video as a primary medium for reaching audiences, the people who actually produced that video — especially experienced documentary filmmakers and visual journalists with nonfiction craft — were simultaneously being laid off at record rates as news organizations cut staff, moved toward cheaper user-generated content, or pivoted to algorithmic social video that prioritized volume over depth. Freelance video journalists and documentary filmmakers existed in what Dylan-Robbins has described as near-total professional isolation — without the peer community, institutional backing, or shared infrastructure that staff positions had previously provided.

The Video Consortium's answer to this structural problem is community infrastructure: not a single program or fellowship but the connective tissue of a professional community — the member directory, the jobs board, the private forum, the local hubs, the rate survey, the annual convening — that gives isolated individual creators access to the collective knowledge, relationships, and mutual support of a 7,000-person global network. The January 2025 launch of the Newsroom Collective, specifically designed to help local news organizations build video capacity, represents a direct extension of this logic into institutional journalism — recognizing that the crisis of local news and the crisis of video journalism are related problems that benefit from a shared solution.

Access and Membership

The Video Consortium's membership is open to those actively working in video journalism, documentary film, or nonfiction content creation — from cinematographers and directors to sound mixers and editors — who have nonfiction experience and credits and a commitment to impactful storytelling. Commercial work is acceptable as long as nonfiction experience is present. Applications are available at videoconsortium.org/join; student discounts (50% off), discounted group memberships for organizations and newsrooms, and general fee discounts for individuals with financial constraints are available on request. Members access the global directory, jobs board, project pages, resource library, private community forum, local hub gatherings, and member-exclusive programs. Local hub events and some programs are open to the broader public. The annual FONV forum at Columbia Journalism School is open to non-members. Contact: community@videoconsortium.org.