Stone Soup Films is a non-profit cooperative that produces and donates funding and promotional films for worthy organizations.
Established film and television professionals mentor and supervise film students to produce high-quality short films highlighting the efforts of these groups.
Everyone benefits from our business model. The students get to make something real, get professional supervision and make important networking contacts. The mentors are able to use their skills for a good cause without having to give a lot of their time. And the organizations get a powerful marketing tool that they would otherwise never be able to afford.
There are many variations of the folk tale Stone Soup. In the most common version, a great famine in Eastern Europe causes people to hoard their food. Weary travelers, searching to fill their empty stomachs, arrive in a new town. When the villagers shun them, the tricky travelers start making a soup with water and “magic stone”. Soon the curious and hungry villagers donate ingredients that make a tasty meal for everyone.
Stone Soup Films was founded on a similar belief – that we each have the power to give and collectively we can achieve things we could never do on our own.
Liz Norton
Director/Founder, Stone Soup Films
Liz Norton was a freelance television producer for over ten years, with a focus on public policy issues. Those programs included several Fred Friendly Seminars for PBS, which explore thorny political and ethical issues in depth and she has also produced for MTV News, educating teens on crime-related issues.
During the Clinton Administration, Liz was a research director in the White House Office of Communications. In that role, she served as a link between the president, the press and the public, primarily on the issues involving crime and drug policy. Before then she was a researcher on political campaign finances for Common Cause, a non-partisan lobbying organization.
For twenty years Liz has been a director of the Diane and Norman Bernstein Foundation in Washington DC. She founded Stone Soup Films in early 2008.
Emmett Williams
Managing Director/Supervising Producer, Stone Soup Films
Emmett Williams is an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, writer, and musician who has worked in multimedia for nearly two decades. After many years in the television industry, he chose to commit his energy to non-profit films, documentaries, and web series. In addition to his current position as Managing Director and Supervising Producer at Stone Soup Films, he is the President of Mission Man Media.
Our Board
- Marc Alexander – Left Light Productions
- Jennifer Burton – Founding Partner, Envision Communications
- Russell Davis – Managing Director, The Advisory Board Company
- Lisa Gunty
- Suzanne Laporte – Executive Director, Compass DC
- Niki Mock – former tv news producer
- Elissa Rubin – former producer ABC News
- Michael Tacelosky – President, Survos
- Miriam Weintraub – former producer CBS News, documentary filmmaker
- Elizabeth Workman – Deputy Director, Fair Chance
