First Five

Sundance alumni filmmaker Janek Ambrose has written, produced, and directed multiple award-winning shorts and features, and most recently attended Sundance as co-producer of In the Summers 🎬✨. Janek also founded Assembly Line Entertainment, where he seeks out projects he’d never conjure on his own—pushing boundaries, genres, and expectations 🚀. Much of Janek’s work is politically minded, so he...

What makes Ginny & Georgia so relentlessly bingeable? In this episode of First Five, we sit down with Ginny & Georgia writers Michelle Askew and Ayotunde Ifaturoti to unpack the craft, chaos, and collaboration behind one of Netflix’s most addictive serialized dramas. Michelle and Ayotunde take us inside the writers’ room to break down their episode—from the bold structural swings to the quiet, int...

Welcome to a short-film focused episode of First 5, the podcast where we explore the first five pages of screenplays—both iconic and in-progress—to uncover what hooks us, what thrills us, and what makes a script truly tick. The talented multi-hyphenate writer, actor, and director Brooke Trantor joins us this episode.  Brooke has made a truly remarkable amount of short films and has played in notab...

Welcome to the premiere of First 5, where we crack open the first five pages of screenplays—iconic and in-progress—to uncover what makes them tick. I'm your host, Lindsay Stidham, and today’s guest is the wildly talented Maggie Lane. Maggie’s a rom-com lover, a cancer survivor, and yes—an alum of Sesame Street. She’s also a certified nose who studied perfumery in Italy and brings us A Cord, her st...