Film & TV, The Creative Process: Acting, Directing, Writing, Cinematography, Producers, Composers, Costume Design, Talk Art & Creativity

Jack Thorne is an internationally acclaimed playwright and BAFTA award-winning screenwriter. His adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is currently airing on HBO and the BBC, and his new series The Eddy was recently released for Netflix. Thorne’s screenwriting career began on the Channel 4 series Shameless and BBC series Skins. Later this year, his feature adaptation of The Secret Gard...

Jack Thorne is an internationally acclaimed playwright and BAFTA award-winning screenwriter. His adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is currently airing on HBO and the BBC, and his new series The Eddy was recently released for Netflix. Thorne’s screenwriting career began on the Channel 4 series Shameless and BBC series Skins. Later this year, his feature adaptation of The Secret Gard...

David Hollander’s career as a television creator, showrunner, screenwriter, producer and director has included Golden Globe winning drama Ray Donovan, The Guardian, Heartland and The Cleaner. As a writer, he began his career as a playwright in the early 1990’s with productions in New York and Los Angeles. In 1994, Hollander turned to screenwriting, working for Paramount Pictures and other major st...

David Hollander’s career as a television creator, showrunner, screenwriter, producer and director has included Golden Globe winning drama Ray Donovan, The Guardian, Heartland and The Cleaner. As a writer, he began his career as a playwright in the early 1990’s with productions in New York and Los Angeles. In 1994, Hollander turned to screenwriting, working for Paramount Pictures and other major st...

"When I was growing up and studying to be an actor as a young man, I'd read plays that were most often based in New York City. A lot of the writers came out the New York writing school, per se, and while I could understand it and relate to it and growing up in Chicago it wasn't that difficult for me to somewhat decipher the nuances of that, but when I read Mamet, to me, it was almost like–Yeah! I...

Actor, producer, writer and director, Joe Mantegna began his career on the stage with the 1969 musical Hair. He later earned a Tony Award for portraying Richard Roma in the first American production of David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, the first of many collaborations with Mamet. Mantegna has appeared in Three Amigos, The Godfather Part III, Forget Paris, and Up Close & Personal and othe...

Trish Sie is a multi-talented director whose work spans the realms of music videos, commercials, and short and feature films. After spending a decade as a professional dancer, championship ballroom competitor and choreographer, she built a successful and championed career in filmmaking. The first music video that she produced, “Here it Goes Again” for the band OK Go, won her a Grammy award. Her su...

Trish Sie is a multi-talented director whose work spans the realms of music videos, commercials, and short and feature films. After spending a decade as a professional dancer, championship ballroom competitor and choreographer, she built a successful and championed career in filmmaking. The first music video that she produced, “Here it Goes Again” for the band OK Go, won her a Grammy award. Her su...

Paul Hirsch received the Academy Award for his editing work on "Star Wars" in 1978. In 2005, he received his second Academy Award nomination for Taylor Hackford's "Ray". He is the only person to ever win the Saturn Award for Best Editing twice. He is the author of "A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away".

Paul Hirsch received the Academy Award for his editing work on "Star Wars" in 1978. In 2005, he received his second Academy Award nomination for Taylor Hackford's "Ray". He is the only person to ever win the Saturn Award for Best Editing twice. He is the author of "A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away".

Tony Walton is an award-winning director and production designer.  His work is vast and stretches from Broadway productions and operas to films and television.  Over the course of his long and coveted career Tony has been honored with 16 Tony Award Nominations for his Broadway sets and costumes.  Of those nominations he received awards for Pippin, House of Blue Leaves, and Guys and...

Tony Walton is an award-winning director and production designer. His work is vast and stretches from Broadway productions and operas to films and television. Over the course of his long and coveted career Tony has been honored with 16 Tony Award Nominations for his Broadway sets and costumes. Of those nominations he received awards for Pippin, House of Blue Leaves, and Guys and Dolls. In his tele...

A veteran composer with many high-profile film and television scores to his credit, Brazilian pianist Marcelo Zarvos was born in São Paulo. Initially studying classical music, Zarvos attended Berklee College of Music and CalArts, and later became active in the jazz world, releasing a highly praised collaboration with saxophonist, Peter Epstein called Dualism. His creative endeavors also expanded t...

Composer John Powell is a multiple Annie Award winner for “Best Music in an Animated Feature Production” and “Best Original Score”. Since rising to prominence with his scores to the Matt Damon Bourne trilogy, he has become known for family animated films, scoring Shrek, Chicken Run, Ice Age (2 & 3), Bolt, Rio, Happy Feet (1 & 2) and Kung Fu Panda (1 & 2) and action music for Hancock, G...

Composer John Powell is a multiple Annie Award winner for “Best Music in an Animated Feature Production” and “Best Original Score”. Since rising to prominence with his scores to the Matt Damon Bourne trilogy, he has become known for family animated films, scoring Shrek, Chicken Run, Ice Age (2 & 3), Bolt, Rio, Happy Feet (1 & 2) and Kung Fu Panda (1 & 2) and action music for Hancock, G...

"When I look at a film, I normally think what is missing from that, and that's what I'm trying to bring. I'm trying to find something that I think isn't there and that I could bring that would make it more interesting, make it more cinematic, more dramatic." Carter Burwell is an Academy Award nominated composer of film soundtracks. He has had a long working relationship with filmmakers the Coen br...

Carter Burwell is an Academy Award nominated composer of film soundtracks. He has had a long working relationship with filmmakers the Coen brothers, scoring every film they have made, as well as all of Spike Jonze's films. His credits include Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, True Grit, Carol, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, The Hudsucker Proxy, Rob Roy, Fargo, The Spanish Prisoner, G...

"What I generally say is I make films about culture. That's kind of my default. And by culture, it's not only film and art and music, but it's food and clothing and language and media and the culture of politics. And I'm much more interested in culture, which I define as how we define ourselves and how we define other people. That's what makes up culture, and those are the kinds of questions I alw...

Morgan Neville is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. For over twenty years he has been making films about music and cultural subjects including Troubadours, Search and Destroy and three Grammy-nominated films: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, Muddy Waters Can’t Be Satisfied, and Johnny Cash’s America. His non-music films include The Cool School, Steinbeck and Shotgun Freeway:...

"The heaviest collaboration I’ve done of course is in movies, and that is an exhausting experience to direct film. I can tell you that it’s also a satisfying one. I loved the camaraderie of all the people on the crew, and the actors and every stage of making a movie is fascinating. I’m glad I had the chance to do this a few times. It taught me a lot about myself and about other people and very imp...

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Prix Médicis étranger, an Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,...

Joshua Pais has appeared in over a hundred movies and TV shows, including recurring roles in Ray Donovan, Mrs. Fletcher, The Good Wife, Maniac, The Sopranos, and Law and Order: SVU. His film work includes Motherless Brooklyn, Joker, Touchy Feely, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Music of the Heart, Assassination of a High School President, and I Saw the Light. The son of holocaust survivor and theore...

Gregory Jbara is a Tony award winning stage actor with a impressive career spanning over four decades . On Broadway, Gregory has stared in renditions of Chicago, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Billy Elliot, which earned him the 2009 Tony award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Since departing from the stage, Gregory has spent ten seasons alongside Tom Selick in the CBS drama Blue Bloods. www.gre...

Gregory Jbara is a Tony award winning stage actor with a impressive career spanning over four decades . On Broadway, Gregory has stared in renditions of Chicago, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Billy Elliot, which earned him the 2009 Tony award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Since departing from the stage, Gregory has spent ten seasons alongside Tom Selick in the CBS drama Blue Bloods.