Bettina Moss (program originator and lead faculty) is an assistant professor in the School of Professional Studies at National University. She has extensive experience in the entertainment business, having worked on independent and big budget films in casting and as a production coordinator. For over eight years she was Managing Story Editor and served as a development executive for HBO Films in Los Angeles. In addition to being a nationally published journalist Bettina sold her first co-written screenplay to Distant Horizons, producer of such films as The Theory of Flight and Cry, The Beloved Country. She received her MFA in Screenwriting from Columbia University film school in New York City.
Alex Ben Blockis an Entertainment industry journalist, author, broadcaster and show business historian is Senior Editor of The Hollywood Reporter. He is also lead Editor of the book George Lucas’s Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success. for George Lucas Books and Harper Collins, published in January 2010. He is also Show Business Historian for Hollywood Today (HollywoodToday.net) and contributor to the nationally syndicated radio program The Advertising Show. He has written for many publications and is author of the critically acclaimed books OUTFOXED: The Inside Story of America’s Fourth Television Network, and international bestseller The Legend of Bruce Lee.
Erik Bork is a professional screenwriter and producer best known for his work on the HBO miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS and FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, for which he wrote multiple episodes, and won two Emmy and two Golden Globe Awards for co-producing.
He has also sold original drama series pitches (to NBC and Fox), and worked on the writing staff of two primetime drama series. Erik has written feature screenplays on assignment for Universal, HBO, TNT, and Playtone (Tom Hanks), and has been employed as a writer by Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, 20th Century-Fox, Imagine Entertainment, Jerry Bruckheimer, Jersey Films, Original Film (Neil Moritz) and Dutch Oven (Doug Liman). Erik got his start as an assistant to Tom Hanks. Erik is represented by Creative Artists Agency.
Bobette Buster is a world-renowned lecturer on What’s the Big Idea? The Art and Craft of Feature Film Development, How Hollywood Makes Money (And Other Inconvenient Truths),. and Fox Thru Film. (a History of Hollywood for Twentieth Century Fox). She is also a screenwriter, script consultant and creator of numerous international script development programs. An Adjunct Professor in the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC since 1992, she also worked as a Creative Executive for Tony Scott, Larry Gelbart and Ray Stark.
Bobette’s screen credits for production and story development include for Barbarians at the Gate (HBO’s first Best Film of the Year Emmy), Weapons of Mass Distraction, and Revenge. Bobette’s screenplays have won two national competitions, been the finalist in the Disney Fellowship Program, and one is now under option. Bobette is also completing the book as a companion to her international course.
Christopher Canaan won an Emmy with Michael Mann for the mini-series, Camerena: Drug Wars.. He has written and produced movies and mini- series for CBS, NBC, ABC, The Family Channel, Fox, USA, Showtime, Hallmark and Starz Encore, including Cries Unheard,. with Hillary Swank, Robinson Crusoe,. starring Pierce Brosnan, and Dashiell Hammett’s The House On Turk Street, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Additionally, he has scribed Gabriel’s Fire, starring James Earl Jones, and was co-creator of the CBS series, Walker Texas Ranger. His screen adaptations include the works of Elmore Leonard, Ann Rice and Robert Ludlum. Canaan holds an MFA in Theater from University of California San Diego. He has performed in regional theater and the professional repertory companies at Tulane University in New Orleans, Dartmouth College, and Tufts University. For the last several years, Canaan has lectured at various universities, including University of California, Berkeley and California Lutheran University. Canaan is a member of the faculty at the Academy of Cinema in Athens, Greece where he taught the Michael Chekhov Technique and creative writing.
Elaine M. Chin is currently the president of production for film director Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious 4). They are based at Universal Studios in an exclusive producing deal. Previously, she served as an executive at 20th Century Fox and HBO Films. While at Fox, she supervised development and production on What Happens In Vegas and at HBO, she worked on Emmy Award winning cable films (The Gathering Storm, Live From Baghdad, Mrs. Harris) as well as, theatrically released films (Elephant, The Last Days, The Notorious Bettie Pageand Mongol). Prior to working at HBO, Elaine supervised development and production for British producers Damian Jones and
Graham Broadbent (Welcome To Sarajevo, Millions). She began her career in the entertainment industry working in the motion picture department at the William Morris Agency. She received her B.A. at Wellesley College in Art History and Chinese Studies.
Asher Garfinkel has presented his workshop, The Art and Business of Story Analysis from Harvard to Hollywood. He is the author of the book Screenplay Story Analysis: The Art and Business (Allworth Press: 2007). Over the past twenty years, he has worked in production and development for studios such as New Line Cinema and Paramount, for independent companies such as Alliance Atlantis and Sun Moon & Stars Entertainment, for feature directors including Peter Medak and Brett Ratner, and for producer Paul Webster. As a story analyst, Asher has evaluated thousands of scripts for a multitude of producers, directors, actors, agents, managers, and writers. He is the founder of Readers Unlimited (www.readersunlimited.com), a Los Angeles-based screenplay coverage and consulting service, and regularly serves as a content analyst for Netflix. Asher graduated from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Science in TV/Film Production and holds an MFA in screenwriting from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television.
Steve Ginsberg screenwriting credits include the original coming-of-age drama Family Prayers,. starring Joe Mantegna, Patti LuPone, Anne Archer and Paul Reiser. He has also written and developed screenplays for numerous film and TV production companies and for such actors as Brenda Blethyn, Richard Dreyfuss and Peter Fonda. He is currently writing Palm Springs Story, an original comedy/drama for producer Joel Kastleberg. In television, Steve has served as a staff writer on the daytime drama, General Hospital. Steve’s recent play, Nick and Katherine, was among the finalists at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference and he has been a guest artist at the Kennedy Center Playwrights Intensive in Washington, DC. Currently, he serves as the Pendleton professional-in-residence for the Ithaca College Los Angeles Program, where he teaches screenwriting, TV writing and advises students about the entertainment industry.
Nick Hardingwas born in England and graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Modern History. After earning an MFA from the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, he moved to Los Angeles in 1985. He has worked as a television writer-producer for over 25 years on both sides of the Atlantic. His writing credits include Doogie Howser, Picket Fences, Murder One, Early Edition and Law and Order. In 1996 he was awarded the Humanitas Prize for his Picket Fences script Saint Zack.
Aaron Iverson has written for CBS’s The District and HBO’s Deadwood. He is a native Chicagoan and a graduate of Columbia College and the University of Chicago. An award winning playwright Aaron’ s plays have been produced in Chicago, London and Los Angeles. He is a current member of the Actor’s Studio and emeritus member of Chicago Dramatists. He has had screenplays optioned by Forty Acres and A Mule and Bill Duke Productions and developed a television project with Tony To.
Sean Jablonski graduated from NYU with a bachelors in film production and started his career interning at Tribeca Films for Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro. He later met and became an assistant to Tom Fontana who mentored his entry into the television world. For nearly fourteen years, Sean has been writing and producing for television with credits that include OZ, Law and Order, Robbery Homicide Division and Nip/Tuck, for which he has also directed. In addition to those shows, Sean has also pitched and sold numerous pilot scripts and had one, The Hoop Life, picked up to series for a 22 episode run on Showtime. Vivendi/Universal released The Bourne Conspiracy video game for which he was also the writer.
Janet Jeffries began her development career working at Mirage Enterprises for director/producer Sydney Pollack. Upon leaving Mirage, she joined Lawrence Bender Productions running development for film producer Lawrence Bender. Mr. Bender has produced Quentin Tarantino’s films, as well as independent features like Innocent Voices, The Chumscrubber, and the Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Along with film, Janet also works with Bender/Brown, the television department of the company, working on both network and cable projects.
Ken Kristensen distinguished himself at Columbia University Film School by being the only student to win all three screenplay awards with three different scripts. He was selected to both the Sundance and IFP labs, and worked as an associate producer under Gary Winick (Charlotte’s Web) and Mark Waters (Mean Girls).After graduating, he won the prestigious Academy Award Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. On the heels of that he was hired by Pulitzer-prize winner Michael Chabon to write a graphic novel spinoff of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which will be published by Dark Horse Comics. Inspired by Chabon’s transmedia approach to developing content, Ken co-created Todd, The Ugliest Kid on Earth which will be published as a graphic novel by Image Comics, and is simultaneously being developed as an animated series. A former journalist (National Geographic, Hearst, Conde Nast), Ken’s cinematic storytelling abilities extend easily to documentary television. He produced four seasons of JAIL (Spike), and the one-hour off-road racing special Road Warriors (Spike). Past TV credits include COPS (Fox) and Inside American Jail (TruTV). Currently Ken is producing the sci fi series Futurestates (PBS) and a docu-drama The Collectors (TruTV) under EPs Claude Brooks and Morgan Langley, which will go into production later this year. For 2012, he is developing several transmedia properties with actor/producer Sam Worthington (Avatar), and writer/producers Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah (Diary of a Wimpy Kid).
Chris Kyle was born and raised in Massachusetts, and is a freelance writer, blogger and screenwriter who has sold projects to Disney and Universal. In addition to National, he’s taught film and screenwriting courses at UC-Irvine Extension and UC-Riverside Extension. For the past few years, he’s worked as a freelance tagger for Netflix and he’s still not sure exactly what that means, but he does get paid to watch movies. He’s also worked for Arianna Huffington as her research director and an assistant editor for The Huffington Post, where he blogs. He majored in English and Classical Studies at Duke and he received his MFA in screenwriting from UCLA.
Christopher Lockhart is a creative executive and filmmaker. A former New York City high school English teacher, Chris received his MFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he was awarded the school’s Public Service Prize for his commitment to public education. His writing workshop The Inside Pitch was produced for TV and earned him an L.A. Area Emmy nomination. He is currently the Story Editor at WME (William Morris Endeavor) in Beverly Hills, the world’s largest talent agency. He started his career at ICM (International Creative Management), where he worked alongside legendary talent agent Ed Limato, looking for potential film projects for A list actors including Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson, Steve Martin, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Downey, Jr. and Liam Neeson.
During his tenure at ICM, he ran the Story Department and supervised the Agent Trainee Program. He has consulted on hundreds of screenplays with studio executives, producers, actors and writers from around the world.
As a producer, he has developed and set-up several studio projects such as A Rhinestone Alibi at Paramount. He co-produced The Collector. (2009) and its sequel The Collection. (2012). He wrote and produced the documentary Most Valuable Players. (2010), which played at film festivals around the world and won the Documentary Channel Audience Award. at the Nashville Film Festival. It premieres on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network in September 2011. Chris is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Writers Guild of America, West and the Producer Guild of America.
James Napoli is an award-winning filmmaker whose short subjects have been shown in the U.S. and internationally. As the Head Writer of New Frequency, he created well over a hundred new plays in every genre for the LA-based live radio show that is still broadcast nationally on XM/Sirius. Several of his own original screenplays have been optioned by independent producers and he has ten years experience as a story analyst for distribution and production companies, as well as for directors and actors in the industry. James completed his graduate studies in the UK, at the London Film School. He has also written and directed original material for the stage, and contributed to such diverse mediums as television animation and the world of books, having just completed his fourth humor title for a major publisher.
Robert Potter - As a longtime reader for HBO Films in Los Angeles, Robert has written script notes on Emmy-winning projects including Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Truman, assisted award-winning writers such as Danny Strong, and evaluated thousands of screenplays. He has also been a story analyst for Castle Rock, Disney and many others. Robert’s screenplays have reached the semifinals or finals of fifteen competitions and he received the Geri Ashur Award for Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts for The Iron Hand. Most recently, Robert won PianoFight ProductionsShortLived 3.0, the nation’s largest audience-judged playwriting competition, for his one-act Anton Chekhov’s The Three Minutes. PianoFight will premiere Robert’s new full-length play Slumpbuster in Los Angeles and San Francisco in February 2011. Robert graduated with Honors with a BFA in Film from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and later studied sit-com writing at the Warner Brothers Workshop.
Jeanne Rosenberg was born and raised in the heart of the heartland - Peoria, Illinois (and Chicago). She has an MFA in Cinema Production from USC. A script analysis of her favorite childhood novel . written as a USC class assignment . led Jeanne to her first Hollywood writing assignment on The Black Stallion. Switching from documentary filmmaker to narrative screenwriter, Jeanne studied her craft while working as a script supervisor on numerous films before completing her first original screenplay, The Journey of Natty Gann. She has been writing as well as producing and directing ever since. In addition to those films her narrative credits include White Fang; T-Rex Back to the Cretaceous; Running Free; Heidi, The Mini Series; Rip Girls; The Young Black Stallion and more.
Her documentary credits include LA Backwater: The Venice Canals (writer/director/camera); Nowhere to Run (writer/director/producer/camera). Narrative Fiction work includes Script Supervisor Rock N Roll Highschool, Pirahna, The Fog, Beastmaster, Vice Squad and more.
Sebastian Twardosz has been very fortunate to work with leading companies in both film and television for the past sixteen years. He is currently a partner in Circus Road Films which advises and represents emerging filmmakers. Previously, he was a senior acquisitions executive for Allumination FilmWorks (a division of ContentFilm) which specialized in the domestic distribution and foreign sales of independently produced feature films. While there he managed one of the company’s main accounts - a licensing agreement with the Slamdance Film Festival. Before that, Sebastian was the head of development for a Paramount-based production company called Craftsman Films which developed numerous studio projects, including the feature film reinvention of the Star Trek franchise. For three years, he worked in comedy and drama development at Touchstone Television, the TV production division of the Walt Disney Company and ABC, where he staffed on six produced pilots.
He also spent four years with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner’s production company as an assistant and development executive from 1995 through 1999, participating in the making of Mission Impossible 1-2 and Without Limits. Sebastian started in the business as an agent’s assistant in the motion picture department at ICM. He graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. His short film, Silent Rain, received a Student Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as the Student Emmy. Sebastian recently co-produced the upcoming independent feature Small Town Saturday Night starring Chris Pine, and he has been an adjunct professor at both UCLA and USC teaching about the art and business of film since 2006.
