Creative Principles

Rachel Shukert grew up in the Omaha theater scene, where she absorbed plays by Tennessee Williams as an actress, before landing at NYU, where she began to find her voice as a writer. As a writer, she’s known for working on Supergirl, GLOW, Cursed, and Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club, where she’s also been producing since 2019. In the 2020 series, the description reads, “Based on the book series of...

Valerie Armstrong always wanted to be a writer, but quickly discovered there was no clear path to becoming a screenwriter. That said, she knew she had to give it a shot, and she eventually landed a job as a Writer’s Assistant on ‘Masters of Sex.’ These days, she’s known for ‘SEAL Team,’ ‘Lodge 49,’ & ‘Kevin Can F**k Himself,’ where she’s also the Creator for this AMC series. The plot is about “the...

As far back as he can remember, Aaron Augenblick has been obsessed with cartoons and animation. As he pursued his passion, he quickly decided to open his own studio at the age of 22. Aaron is best known for working on Daria, Ugly Americans, The Jellies!, Death Hacks, Teenage Euthanasia, and The Adventures of Drunky, which stars the voice talents of Sam Rockwell, Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Coogan, and N...

Camille Griffin has credits in the Camera and Electrical Department for movies like Layer Cake, Star Wars: Episode 1, and Jojo Rabbit, before making her first film Silent Night. The new film stars Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Roman Griffin Davis. The plot for her debut reads, "Nell, Simon, and their son Art are ready to welcome friends and family for what promises to be a perfect Christmas...

“From the very first moment I saw Annie, I knew I wanted to do that.” Kourtney Kang got her start acting and singing before moving into screenwriting and playwriting. Today, she’s best known for creating the Disney Plus reboot ‘Doogie Kamealoha M.D.,’ and writing for major shows like ‘Fresh Off the Boat,’ and ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ In Doogie Kamealoha M.D., the story follows Lahela "Doogie" Kame...

On her first day on set, Danis Goulet knew she wanted to be a filmmaker. As she transitioned from casting to head a film festival in Toronto, she saw a potential path to making her own shorts, like Spin, Divided by Zero, Wapawekka, and Barefoot. Her first full feature as the writer-director, Night Raiders, the story focuses on a mother who joins an underground band of vigilantes to try to rescue h...

“It stretches back at least 10 years,” said Edgar Wright about the story idea for Last Night in Soho. Edgar, who is well known for his musical taste, in movies like Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, and Baby Driver, seems to write, direct, and edit with the score or soundtrack in mind. With this setting in mind, Edgar eventually crafted the character of Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), an aspiring fash...

“I had a story I wanted to tell,” said Eleanor Coppola, filmmaker and wife of Francis Ford Coppola. “Some of it was a little bit personal and I didn’t want to make a documentary out of it, so I made a fiction piece.” Prior to her fiction features Paris Can Wait and Love Is Love Is Love, Eleanor made documentaries such as Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, A Visit to China’s Miao Country...

Cousins Ryan Firpo and Kaz Firpo both felt a deep connection to storytelling, but it wasn’t until they formed a partnership that they were able to break into the industry. Their script Ruin, about a nameless ex-Nazi captain after WWII who hunts down the surviving members of the SS Death Squad, actually won the 2017 Black List (and is now listed as pre-production with Margot Robbie attached and Jus...

As an actress, Justine Bateman is best known for her early television role as Mallory Keaton on Family Ties, but she also starred on Lois & Clark, Men Behaving Badly, Still Standing, Desperate Housewives, and Arrested Development, alongside her brother Jason Bateman. But, since the age of 19, she’s wanted to be a director. After graduating from UCLA a few years ago, she made two shorts - Five Minu...

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is best known for his role as Tommy on 3rd Rock from the Sun and for movies like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, 50/50, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Lincoln, and Snowden. In this interview, we discuss Joseph’s work as a writer-director, for the film Don Jon and the new series Mr. Corman. In the 2013 film that co-stars Scarlett Johansson, “A New Jersey guy dedicated to h...

In ‘Mayday,’ Ana is transported to a dreamlike and dangerous land where she joins an army of girls engaged in a never-ending war. Though she finds strength in this exhilarating world, she realizes that she's not the killer they want her to be. The films stars Grace Van Patten, Mia Goth, Yoko, and Juliette Lewis. In this interview, Karen talks about untraditional filmmaking styles, how to protect y...

"We were thinking about a comedic version of Psycho,” said Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard, Dodgeball), about his latest project, Lady of the Manor, which he co-wrote and co-directed with his brother, Christian Long (Hop, Accepted). This idea morphed into more of a buddy comedy, involving a ne’er-do-well played by Melanie Lynskey and the ghost of a mansion, played by Judy Greer. The two meet wh...

For twenty years, Marina Zenovich has been making documentaries about subjects that interest her. Past subjects include Lance Armstrong, Robin Williams, Roman Polanski, and Richard Pryor. For her latest project, What Happens in Hollywood, the series takes a candid look at Hollywood’s role in framing society’s overall view of sex and sexuality. Subjects include Robin Wright, Minnie Driver, and Bobb...

While in college, Tracy Oliver was interested in the performing arts, but she eventually realized she was often the “sassy, funny sidekick and not the lead.” This realization - and her mother - actually inspired her to start writing rather than wait for someone to cast her. Oliver was tired of being the “cigarette-smoking friend” or in the “slavery movie,” so she started to write about herself. “T...

Husband-and-wife writing and directing team Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapill met while working in local television news. Despite being at competitive stations, they both despised local television news and wanted to find a more creative path to “visual storytelling” where they weren’t “forced to tell a story in 30 seconds.” Together, the couple has credits for documentaries like The Elephant Bath, Th...

Michele Civetta got his start making commercials and shorts. This taught him the balance of creativity and commerce, while also teaching him a technical background to eventually move into features. In his first project, Agony, the movie focused on psychological uncertainty within past traumas. In his latest film, The Gateway, a social worker assigned to care for the daughter of a single mother int...

After working as a writer-director on her first film, Timer, Jac Schaeffer discovered she could land more jobs as a screenwriter. The description of Timer reads, “If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soul mate, would you want to know?” After Timer, she worked on a handful of screenplays, created a short called Mr. Stache, and even worked on the short Olaf’s Frozen Adventure for...

Growing up on comedies like Monty Python, Trent O'Donnell has always been fascinated with “dumb comedies.” He got his start making shorts, commercials, and eventually landed some work in television. As a writer-director, he’s known for The Moodys, No Activity, and most recently, the movie Ride the Eagle. Trent O'Donnell met Jake Johnson while directing episodes of New Girl for Fox. In their latest...

Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky met doing comedy in New York, where they eventually landed jobs together on Broad City. Today, they’re the Creators of the new comedy series, Hacks, for HBO. For the series, Jean Smart stars as Deborah Vance, a legendary Las Vegas comedian who begrudgingly takes an outcast 25-year-old named Ava (Hannah Einbinder) under her wing. In this interview, the...

Neill Blomkamp grew up in South Africa before he moved to Canada to work in VFX, and found his natural path into filmmaking. Known for the science fiction fable, he’s created iconic movies like District 9, Elysium, Chappie, and most recently, Demonic. In District 9, an extraterrestrial race is forced to live in slum-like conditions on earth. In Elysium, the wealthy live in a man-made space station...

Tim Long got his start writing for magazines where he eventually landed a job writing for Bill Maher on ‘Politically Incorrect,’ and then ‘Late Night with David Letterman,’ where he eventually became the head writer. Today, Long is best known for writing for ‘The Simpsons’ and he’s just created a movie about his life as a teenager. In ‘The Exchange,’ the fictionalized Tim Long is played by Ed Oxen...

Bruce Miller spent the first part of his career penning movies that rarely got made, until he started writing television movies. All of a sudden, his stories were coming to the silver screen and then he moved to television. Today, Miller is best known for writing on ‘ER,’ ‘Everwood,’ ‘Medium,’ ‘The 4400,’ ‘In Plain Sight,’ Alphas,’ ‘The 100,’ and now, he’s the creator of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ On...

Alena Smith got her start as a playwright, which she believes “uniquely prepares you for what it takes to be a creator and show runner of a television show.” This background, of being a collaborator and visionary, helped Smith and many of her Yale peers transition to television work. She’s known for working on Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’ and fellow alum Sarah Treem’s ‘The Affair.’ In her most re...

Jeffrey Paul King’s creative pursuits came from an interest in opera at an early age. While in boarding school, he spent time writing and in college, he had a play accepted to the Fringe Festival in Scotland. Then, he moved to LA, worked his way up from being an assistant, and eventually interning at ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ King’s first gig was on the series ‘Elementary,’ where he worked for seven seaso...