About Melody

Melody Gilbert is a visual storyteller based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she works on long and short-term video projects.

Melody has been directing, producing, shooting and editing award-winning feature-length documentaries for more than 15 years through her production company, Frozen Feet Films (see her doc demo reel here). Her films have premiered at prestigious film festivals around the world such as SXSW and Hot Docs, and been broadcast on PBS, The Sundance Channel, and on dozens of networks internationally including TF1 (France), YLE (Finland), RTL (Germany) and TV2 (Denmark). Melody has also been awarded grants from the Jerome Foundation, MN State Arts Board and she she was a recipient of the prestigious McKnight Foundation Filmmaker Artist fellowship.

Melody regularly collaborates with large companies, agencies and nonprofit organizations around the world to create authentic branded content. Clients include Best Buy, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, BBDO, National Geographic, Pork Belly Ventures, Torah Academy, University of Minnesota, Little & Co., Hamline University, Way to Grow, USIA, Cabrini Partnership, GoldenCare USA, among others.

Melody also films and produces candid and emotional wedding films for newlyweds, creating memories to last a lifetime.

She is an advisory board member and instructor at IFP-MN, a founding member of Film Fatales (Minneapolis Chapter), Women in Film and Television (Minneapolis Chapter), and founder of DocuClub MN, a group that has met monthly for over 10 years to review rough cuts for feedback. She also is the founder of the Minnesota Documentary Collective, a group of Minnesota visual storytellers, dedicated to recording and preserving the changes in local communities in the current political climate. Prior to independent documentary filmmaking, Melody was an award-winning broadcast journalist who specialized in investigative reporting and special projects. She has also worked with NBC, CBS, and ABC News as a field producer and with Tremendous Productions as a producer/writer.

Melody’s work has been profiled and reviewed in a variety of publications, including recently in VICE, Inverse, and on Bulgarian National Television. One of her films, A Life Without Pain, was featured on 20/20 and Oprah.  A film she produced, The Starfish Throwers, was named "the most heartwarming film of 2014" by the Huffington Post and won a James Beard award in 2016.

Melody is also a passionate educator who has taught documentary filmmaking and journalism to undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota, Carleton College, Columbia College, College of Visual Arts, and the American University in Bulgaria. She currently resides in Minneapolis with her husband Mark, a freelance writer and editor.