Meet the Team
Crafty was co-founded by Alexander Jeffery, Steven Hellmann and Kyle Brunick in 2023. The trio met in 2018 when Alex was establishing himself as a filmmaker in the short film world and Kyle and Steve were working at Gunpowder & Sky and developing feature films of their own. Fast forward to 2020 when Alex and Steve reconnected at the El Dorado Film Festival. At the festival, both showcased recently completed feature-length films: Alex’s A Chance Encounter, distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films, and Steve’s Taking The Fall, distributed by Circle Collective. Alex, Steve and Kyle have had to overcome challenges to get their own films in front of an audience and discussed ways to smooth the path for other filmmakers. After a several years of outlining, planning, stopping and starting, the three finally joined forces to create Crafty.
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Co-FounderAlexander Jeffery hails from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was raised in El Dorado, Arkansas and is now based in Shreveport, Louisiana where he co-owns the production company Bespoke Works LLC with his friend and longtime collaborator, Paul Petersen.
His first feature film, A Chance Encounter, was released by Samuel Goldwyn Films in October of 2022, both theatrically and on-demand, after winning the audience choice award at Heartland Film Festival in 2020. In 2015, his short film The Bespoke Tailoring of Mister Bellamy won the $50,000 Grand Prize at the Louisiana Film Prize. MTV called it “an acutely relevant, achingly human film.” Alexander’s latest feature, Days of Daisy, was recently picked up for distribution by Good Deed Entertainment, and his first feature-length documentary, You Have No Idea, won the Audience Choice award for Best Southern Feature at the Oscar-qualifying Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in 2022.
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Co-Founder
Steven Hellmann, originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia, moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2016 with several years of writing screenplays under his belt. After a year in Los Angeles, Steven accepted a job in the marketing and distribution department at Gunpowder & Sky and ran the digital marketing ad campaigns for over a dozen titles.
Steven used that knowledge to finance and create his debut feature film, Taking The Fall. He then used his hands on film distribution experience to coordinate the release and marketing of the film onto digital platforms in April of 2021 alongside a sales team. In addition to theatrical marketing and filmmaking, Steven was responsible for running the paid advertising campaigns to build up the YouTube channels (DUST and ALTER). Steven was amazed to find the amount of talent that these largely undiscovered filmmakers possessed and felt compelled by his passion for film to use his marketing knowledge to help elevate the amazing work in the short film space.
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Co-Founder
Kyle has spent the past decade helping build and grow successful entertainment brands. With a community-first approach, he leverages technology and storytelling to create immersive experiences that resonate deeply with audiences. By becoming deeply embedded with the community, he identifies emerging trends and has helped establish sci-fi channel DUST as a leading destination for science fiction content and grow a devoted following for horror brand, ALTER. His work with Podium Audio helped establish itself as the fastest growing audiobook publishing company in the world.