Riverside Entertainment recently added two executives to its ranks.
Brendon Nelson came on board as managing director, and Cynthia Graner will be the new head of production of the Atwater development and production company, which specializes in commercial, unscripted and scripted content.
Both will work out of the Los Angeles office and report to managing partners Jeff Molyneaux, Brian Loschiavo and Pastor Alvarado III.
“Cynthia and Brendon cumulatively bring more than three decades of experience to Riverside,” Alvarado said in a statement. “Their combined expertise will allow us to continue our growth in production services and allow for further expansion into scripted development.”
As a managing director, Nelson will be responsible for executing the company’s business strategy and will focus on client engagement, personnel retention and recruitment, vendor relations and best practices across all business lines, according to a release from Riverside.
Nelson joins Riverside from Media.Monks, an advertising and creative agency based in Hilversum, the Netherlands. He was the company’s first U.S. hire and a key player in building out the company’s first physical studio space and a post-production team that went on to prestigious projects including multiple commercials for Super Bowl LV and Doordash’s partnership with the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, according to the Riverside release.
Prior to that, he worked for MagicBullet Media, a video production and creative content agency that was based in Los Angeles and New York and is no longer in business, and for MLB.com, where he was responsible for monitoring live broadcasts, uploading content to multiple media platforms and creating MLB branded content, the release added.
As head of production, Graner will handle management and oversight of Riverside’s physical production across all business lines.
She comes to the company after having wrapped production on the psychological thriller “Viral,” a feature film starring Sarah Silverman and Alfre Woodard that was directed by Blair Underwood.
Additionally, Graner owns her own production company, Stairway Films, for which she has produced commercials and marketing campaigns for companies including Simon & Schuster, Proctor & Gamble, Olay and Ancestry.com, among others.
Prior to that, she worked with Warner Bros. Entertainment in Burbank in creative development and clearance, as the manager of production for the American Film Institute’s directing workshop for women, and in filmmaker relations at the Bentonville Film Festival, the release said.
Graner graduated from the American Film Institute’s producing program in 2005.
