“Working with Fran Sterling and BlueShift Education on the FIRE OF LOVE educational and outreach campaign was a wonderful experience. The materials they created expanded the reach and deepened the engagement with our film in myriad, impactful ways. Fran is an extremely knowledgeable educator who brings expertise, professionalism, creativity, and joy into her every process. She is passionate about effecting positive social change through strategic engagement and storytelling; she is deeply thoughtful and collaborative, as well, which is reflected in her nuanced, multidimensional work. I am so grateful to have gotten the chance to work with Fran and BlueShift and I plan to do so on all my other film campaigns moving forward, as well.”

-Sara Dosa, Director, Fire and Love

“Blueshift distilled nuanced concepts into accurate and easily digestible language for the Impact Guide accompanying Mission: JOY – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Tutu. Their extremely intelligent and well-informed team was able to work with high levels of sophistication at the same time as they made the Guide inviting and compelling for audiences in [204] countries and territories and counting. Viewers have loved what they created.”
– Peggy Callahan, Co-Director and Producer of Mission: JOY, and Jolene Smith, Impact Producer, Mission: JOY

“As a filmmaker who is passionate about the impact of my films, I enjoyed working with Blueshift because they share that same passion and bring a level of expertise and professional experience to the educational outreach. They are able to translate the most important moments and nuances of a film into a real life conversation-starter with their guides. The materials Blueshift collaborated with me to create are meaningful because they are deeply researched and help audiences get beneath the surface to use the film for meaningful discussions. The quality of Blueshift’s work is unbeatable – from the in-depth investigations and writing, to the design and presentation, these educational guides are easy to use and full of useful content.”

-Elaine McMillion Sheldon, Peabody Award-winning Director, Heroin(e) and Recovery Boys

“Blueshift revolutionized the educational materials that accompany our documentary films. There is a reason why the company is so good at creating teaching tools linked to socially relevant films – it is because Blueshift is run by former teachers who understand what works and even more importantly, what doesn’t work in classrooms. And they care about making a difference by empowering young people and teachers with information they can use. In 2018 we worked with Blueshift to create educational lesson plans, curriculum and a comprehensive study guide for our HBO documentary King in the Wilderness. It is already being adopted into curriculum in Atlanta schools. A year later, in 2019 we worked together on True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight For Equality. Blueshift adapted Bryan’s work that challenges the racial narrative of American history. They created lessons that are based on truth-telling. The team at Blueshift is smart, passionate, hardworking and totally collaborative with producers. We can’t think of a better partner to work on our films moving forward.”

– Peter, George and Teddy Kunhardt, Kunhardt Films

“I can’t thank you [Blueshift] enough for this beautiful work. This has been really helpful for me in terms of how I think about sharing my film in the future. It has also broadened my scope of accessibility in relation to film and how we share our art and our stories with the world. I love that we’re all having these conversations.”

-Kelsey Peterson, Director, Move Me

“Blueshift Education created a thoughtful, comprehensive curriculum for The Human Element that we debuted right on time to thousands of teachers at the National Science Teachers Association’s annual conference in April, 2019. The curriculum is composed of six lesson plans, each with stimulating discussion questions, interesting assignments, and in-depth reading materials. Given that our team had little experience building educational materials, Jen and Fran’s expertise and advice was essential and much appreciated.”

– Olivia Ahnemann, Producer, and Caroline Beaton, Impact Coordinator, The Human Element

I have had the pleasure of working with Fran Sterling and Blueshift since it’s inception. In a short period of time, Blueshift has become a mainstay in the documentary education landscape. The range of topics in which they develop materials is jaw-dropping. I have worked with them on issues ranging from climate change to hate crimes to criminal justice reform. Their work is consistently strong– well-researched, organized and impact-driven.  Our industry is fortunate to have such dedicated, generous of heart and, intellectually curious educators that certainly impact the ability to use social justice documentaries in educational and training environments.
— Erin Sorenson, Director and Founder, Third Stage Consulting

“Working with Blueshift to develop educational materials that helped us achieve the outreach and impact goals for our documentary was a fantastic experience. We loved having in-depth conversations about our vision as filmmakers at the beginning of the process, and they did a fantastic job of then translating and crystalizing that vision into the educational materials.”

– Anna Moot-Levin and Laura Green, Directors, The Providers, Stray Pony Productions

“Blueshift truly understood the message and mission of INVENTING TOMORROW and put them into practice when they created our educational curriculum focused on doing scientific research to teach environmental sustainability in STEM classrooms. They wrote the curriculum around Next Gen Science Standards (NGSS) so teachers can use these materials to meet educational requirements, which we’ve found has made tremendous impact. We have received positive feedback and testimonials from teachers and educators across the country. Their curriculum has been so successful that now we’re translating it into several languages, so teachers can use INVENTING TOMORROW in classrooms around the world.”

-Laura Nix, Director, Inventing Tomorrow

“We had the great benefit of working with Blueshift before we finished post-production on Raising Bertie. We wanted to engage viewers in the issues that are important to rural residents—like access to quality education, transportation, technology, and health care. It was great to know we could provide this important context in supplemental materials without taking the audience out of the characters’ stories. The Blueshift team helped us to create a user-friendly discussion guide that highlighted these themes by providing viewers with background information about the film’s issues, ideas for discussion, and ways for viewers to take action. During the design process, Blueshift’s staff was empathetic and generous with their time even attending screenings in Bertie County, NC. Our planning sessions were always collaborative and efficient due to Blueshift’s level of expertise in curriculum design. Through our teamwork, we developed a powerful discussion guide that will be used by viewers of our film for years to come. I hope to work with Blueshift again on future projects.”

– Margaret Byrne, Director, Raising Bertie and Any Given Day

“After three years of laboring in the field to bring the stories featured in CHARM CITY to life, it was a scary proposition to invite in a new team to help us hone such a carefully crafted message into a meaningful discussion guide. Blueshift listened closely to our experiences in production, our goals for education, the work we had already undertaken, the resources we, as filmmakers, could bring to the table and then added their own curiosity and deep well of experience to the mix. They then worked diligently – soliciting our feedback often – to turn all of those raw materials into a rich and thought-provoking discussion guide to help a broad swath of audiences engage with the film. We remain incredibly grateful to Blueshift for elevating the discussion and overall impact of the film.”

– Marilyn Ness, Director/Producer, Charm City, Big Mouth Productions

“Blueshift came highly recommended by many of my fellow documentary filmmakers. From our initial phone call, they were genuinely curious about the subject matter of our film and had creative ideas about how to expand upon the content and reach more audiences.  They took the time to meticulously research material for screening guides and were thorough about interviewing subjects of the film and respective experts in the field. They brought a great designer to the process who built us a beautiful website from scratch. They were easy to communicate with throughout the entire process, creating lots of time and space for feedback and dialogue.”

– Rebekah Fergusson, End Game

“Our work with Blueshift was an incredibly rewarding capstone to the making of our film. As documentary film professors by day, Scott and I teach our students about the impact these films can have in the public square and it was incredibly exciting to work with Blueshift during our outreach efforts to help us practice what we had been preaching! It was really important for us to use the film to facilitate dialogue and empathy around an important (and contentious) issue and Blueshift’s efforts could not have been more crucial in helping us achieve that. The discussion guide they spearheaded was an amazing tool in our community and educational screenings, absolutely essential. Could not recommend more highly!”

— Brad Barber, Director, Peace Officer

“Blueshift dug deeply into the themes of our film, and opened my eyes to the potential scope of an educational curriculum.  What began as an English lesson plan is now so much more – an immersive multimedia curriculum, which will allow the film a long and successful life in the educational space.”

– Jason Zeldes, Director, Romeo is Bleeding