Documentary · Audio · Multimedia Storytelling
What Now? Productions
We follow people to the point where something has to change — and ask what happens next.
What Now? Productions makes nonfiction stories about people colliding with systems, assumptions and circumstances bigger than themselves. Founded by producer and journalist Amanda Kari McHugh in 2012, the company develops original documentary and narrative audio projects — and brings the same reporting, producing, audience and multimedia instincts to commissioned work.
SELECTED WORK, TRAINING & RECOGNITION
Selected Work
Explore all project details →
Investigative Narrative Audio · In Development
Rendered Obsolete
What happens when the technology designed to replicate a performer starts changing what it means to own a performance?
Feature Documentary · What Now? Productions
The Family Tree
The Family Tree is the story of a man pursuing his American Dream at the age of retirement: having a Christmas tree farm while the local government does everything it can to stop him.
Short Film / Public-Service Campaign · 2020
COVID-19 Etiquette
A vintage-etiquette-inspired COVID-19 public-service short conceived, directed and produced during the first year of the pandemic.
Engagement Journalism · Founder Project
Voices of Adoption
A social-first journalism project built with adoptees and birth parents to examine adoption through the people most directly affected by it.
How the work gets made
The story determines the toolkit.
Over the course of Amanda Kari McHugh’s career, different stories have required different skills. So she kept learning the tools necessary to make them: reporting and interviewing, producing and field recording, photography and video, narrative audio, multimedia and audience engagement.
What Now? Productions develops original stories and also works with newsrooms, filmmakers, nonprofits, researchers and mission-driven organizations when they need someone who can move between those forms without losing the thread of the story.
View Amanda’s journalism & portfolio → (opens in new tab)Company Evolution
2012 → Now
2012
What Now? begins
Founded in Los Angeles to hold a documentary concept as Amanda Kari McHugh began moving from acting toward documentary producing.
2014
The Family Tree
Production begins on WNP’s first feature documentary.
2015–2019
The toolkit expands
Different stories lead Amanda into directing, production, photography, video, social storytelling and live events.
2020
COVID-19 Etiquette
WNP independently produces and distributes a public-service short that reaches drive-in audiences across seven states.
2021–2024
Journalism becomes central
Reporting, public media, engagement journalism, multimedia investigation and narrative audio become central to Amanda’s work.
2024–Present
The next chapter
Rendered Obsolete develops into a WNP narrative-audio project while the company expands its focus on original nonfiction and commissioned audio, documentary and multimedia production.
Freedom!
Standing on a tree branch.
Now what?
About
Founded in Los Angeles in 2012. Built by following the story wherever it needed to go.
What Now? Productions began around a documentary idea. The project did not launch, but the company remained — and Amanda Kari McHugh kept building the skills needed to make nonfiction work herself.
Producing led to documentary filmmaking, photography and video; then journalism, audience engagement and narrative audio. The company’s range grew one real story and one unfamiliar problem at a time.
Work With WNP
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Looking for a producer, reporter, story partner or production support? Share a few details about the project and where it stands.