SEAN GANNET
Founder & Creative Director, SFG Productions
THE STORYTECHNICIAN
Sean Gannet is the founder and creative director of SFG Productions, a Brooklyn-based live event production company built on a single conviction: that a story told live can change what a room believes — and what it does next. A filmmaker by training, he has produced live experiences since 2010 for organizations including TED, ACLU, Sundance, and Snowflake.
FROM FRAME TO STAGE
Sean learned storytelling one frame at a time. A Northwestern graduate in Radio/TV/Film, he spent his early career directing — two independent features, Chasing Taste (2013) and Last Night in Rozzie (2021), that collected nine festival awards and honors between them, from Cinequest to Hill Country to the Manhattan Film Festival. Film taught him pacing. Structure. The discipline of making every second earn its place.
Then a production gig with the TED Conferences put those instincts in a room full of people, and the difference was electric. On screen, a story asks for your attention. Live, it can take hold of a room and turn it — in the moment, in the same breath. Sean had found the format he’d been building toward without knowing it.
He started folding cinematic craft into live production: narrative arc, rhythm, the setup and the release. Shows built that way didn’t just land. They moved. In 2013 he founded SFG Productions to do that work on purpose, and what began with TED grew into a roster of partners with something consequential to say — Slack, Sundance, ACLU, Snowflake, and beyond.
LEFT BRAIN. RIGHT BRAIN. BOTH HANDS.
Sean works where most productions draw a line — between the creative and the technical — and refuses to pick a side.
- Show design and narrative arc
- Live event production and technical direction
- Broadcast, virtual, and hybrid production
- Speaker coaching and presentation consultation
- Second-by-second run-of-show direction
- Scripting and creative direction
- Audience journey and experience design
- Film and video production
WHERE THE STORIES LANDED
Sean has directed and produced for TED, ACLU, ASCAP, buildOn, Sundance, Snowflake, Slack, Webflow, The Audacious Project, Stripe, Socure, Proofpoint, and BCG — intimate thought-leadership rooms and global stages alike. The through-line was never the scale. It was whether the audience left different than they arrived.
FIRST WE LISTEN. THEN WE ELEVATE.
Sean isn’t in the business of telling partners what to say. He takes what they already know they want to say and helps them say it with heft. That’s why SFG builds speaker coaching and presentation consultation into the production itself rather than bolting it on afterward — because the best gear on earth can’t rescue a story that hasn’t been shaped.
He writes on storytelling, audience engagement, and production craft at SFG Insights →
THE RECORD
Education
B.S., Radio/TV/Film — Northwestern University
Memberships
World Experience Organization · Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
Film
Last Night in Rozzie (2021) — Director & Producer. Best Feature and Cinema Dulce (Best of Fest), Hill Country Film Festival · Audience Award for Feature Drama, Cinequest San Jose · Best Feature Film, Fort Myers Beach · Best Feature, Julien Dubuque International · Honorable Mention, Roxbury International · 3rd Place Audience Award, Woods Hole · HBO Competition Award nominee, Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. Released theatrically by Gravitas Ventures.
Chasing Taste (2013) — Director & Producer. Best Comedy Feature, Burbank International Film Festival · Best Comedic Feature, Manhattan Film Festival · Domani Vision Award nominee for Best Director, New York VisionFest.
Speaking & Press
Guest, Oh Ship! Show — “The Power of Storytelling in Live Events”
Guest, Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher — “Getting Real with Sean Gannet”
IT’S SHOWTIME.
Have something worth saying to a room? Let’s make sure it lands.