FMSMF Leadership Team Prepares for 2025

January 1, 2025

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by Rasteen Karami, FMSMF Manager of Community Relations

As we enter 2025, the Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund (FMSMF) reflects back on a great first year under its new leadership team. FMSMF is now led by Executive Director Brian Sickles, who previously served as chief operating officer for three years. Mike Hoffmann, our newest addition, fills the role of chief operating officer. He brings an impressive and robust history of experience in business operations as he works to optimize distribution-related processes for the fund.

Roxanne Castillo, previously FMSMF general counsel, was recently promoted to chief administrative officer and executive counsel. She operates the contributor facing side of FMSMF by facilitating compliance training and education for producers and fostering the fund’s participation in conversations on developing and ongoing trends in the industry. Meera Mittal was recently promoted to senior director of finance. An accomplished CPA, Mittal continues her steadfast leadership of the Accounting and Finance team’s functions, which are integral to the success of our yearly distribution.

Steady as We Go

For the July 2024 distribution, total collections remained steady at over $144 million, echoing the success of the July 2023 distribution. Over 18,000 musicians and their beneficiaries received residual payments this past year. This consistent performance reflects the enduring strength of FMSMF’s operations, and our dedication to engaging effectively with producers to ensure correct residual payouts to musicians. This is of the utmost importance with the many challenges and ever-changing landscape of the motion picture industry.

New Titles

In fiscal year 2024, the FMSMF saw 170 titles contributing residuals for the first time. This includes prominent projects such as Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Barbie (2023), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), and American Horror Story (Season 11). Given the slowdown in production across the entertainment sector, these numbers are quite impressive and reassuring. Keep in mind, FMSMF counts an entire season of a series as a single new title. A complete list of the fiscal year 2024 new titles is available on the fund website: www.fmsmf.org/filmtitles/new-films.php.

Investing in the Future of Music

FMSMF continues its mission to support the motion picture and production music communities. This includes outreach events such as panel discussions, workshops, and webinars designed to educate the next generation of working musicians and filmmakers about issues involving film, television, and new media scoring.

Columbia University Film Scoring Workshop, co-sponsored by the FMSMF and American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), provides a unique opportunity for student filmmakers at Columbia to experience the film scoring process. Student composers are supported by an orchestra of musicians from Local 802 (New York City). Alums from this workshop have gone on to make waves in the industry, cementing the program as one of the premier scoring workshops in the world.

FMSMF hosted a panel at South By Southwest in 2024. “How to Get the Best Music for Your Project” featured Composer Graham Reynolds (Where’d You Go Bernadette, A Scanner Darkly); Music Supervisor Lilah Obregon-Wilson (We Are Young, Sleepwalk with Me); and our own Roxanne Castillo. This in-depth conversation provided musicians and budding filmmakers with insight into working with composers, musicians, music supervisors, and other key stakeholders involved in developing scores and soundtracks.

Looking Ahead

FMSMF is preparing to move to a new office in 2025. With the lease for the current office coming to an end after 10 years, the timing worked out perfectly to downsize and maximize cost efficiency, while continuing to provide exceptional services to contributors and participants. An announcement on the new office space, move-in date, and office hours will go out to all fund participants in spring 2025.

Keeping You Informed

FMSMF continues to provide information to participants through email reminders and website updates. Whether you are an FMSMF participant or not, we hope you’ll keep up to date on FMSMF activities by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. In the year ahead, we will be expanding our social presence and presenting educational content from webinars to our new FAQ content series and much more across all social platforms.

To learn more, visit www.fmsmf.org.

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