NYFA
Faculty Directory

Faculty Directory

Neil Casey

Neil Casey is a cinematographer whose body of work includes feature films, short films, documentaries, music videos, and live events. He started his career in New York, where he worked as a camera operator and lighting technician for film and television before moving to Los Angeles to earn his master’s degree. For over a decade he has had the pleasure of working with a variety of artists and companies, including Stan Lee’s World of Heroes and POW! Entertainment. At NYFA, Neil works to teach aspiring directors and cinematographers the art, practices, and technologies that exist in the ever-evolving world of cinematography.

Marina Catala

Marina Catala is a New York-based Producer and Editor who has developed, produced and edited hundreds of hours of television content for networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Bravo, and The CW. She graduated with an MFA in Editing from the AFI Conservatory in 2003, just as reality TV was emerging as a major presence on broadcast and cable television. She was an Editor on shows like The Biggest Loser, The Amazing Race, and Big Brother, before a desire for more creative input took her out of the edit chair. For several years she oversaw the Post departments of shows like Ink Master and I Used to be Fat, and then took her command of Post Production and applied it to all aspects of Production – from development to pre-production to field producing – as an Executive Producer. Most recently, she was the EP of Impractical Jokers for seven seasons, and the Showrunner of its spin-off, After Party, for three seasons.

José Alberto Venutolo Chirinos

José Venutolo is a freelance Filmmaker based in New York City since 2010, he works as a Director, Producer, Editor, DIT, Videographer, and Educator. Born and raised in Venezuela he found his way to New York in 2008 and pursued studies in filmmaking at the New York Film Academy from 2008 to 2010, he’s fluent in Spanish and English, and conversational Italian. Teaches Directing and Editing at the New York Film Academy (NYFA) and is currently the Director of the NYFA Teen Summer Camps at the New York City campus; he has worked as an educator in video production and editing for The Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) as well. In his 13 years career his has work on a range of video productions from Narrative to commercial, including Short and Feature Films, Advertisement, Institutional videos, PSAs, Documentaries, and Music Videos, frequently wearing many hats on a production.

Jay Cipriani

Jay Cipriani received his BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from WVU, studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and received his MFA in Film Production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.

He began his career in story development and production working with writer/director Barry Levinson, producers Paula Weinstein, Len Amato, and Palak Patel, and later with writer Ted Griffin.

In 2008, he joined HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm assisting the show’s writing team, Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel.

2009’s A Golden Christmas, ION’s first original film, was Jay’s first produced screenplay and he has since written many more films including Hallmark’s Christmas Land and Carole’s Christmas for OWN.

Jay has story consulted on various projects throughout his career as well as being recognized in various screenwriting competitions, the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship, New Blood, Top 100 Emerging Screenwriters, Top 25 Spotlight Screenwriting Competition and The Tracking Board Top 25 Launch Pad to name a few. His scripts have also been top submissions on both the Black List website and Spec Scout. In 2015 he won Chicago’s Pride Films and Plays Screenwriting Competition where his screenplay SOMEBODY TO LOVE was performed live.

James H. Coburn IV CAS

James H. Coburn IV has been teaching production sound at college level for fifteen years. He is a Production Sound Mixer of 25 independent feature films, including The Bronx Bull, Free Enterprise and All’s Faire In Love, and TV series including Roger Corman’s Black Scorpion and Guru To Go for Discovery Networks. He was one of the mixers on the 2015 documentary Kobe Bryant’s Muse. His most recent project was consulting about sound and mixing for the documentary feature, Be The Beauty, which showcases Poet Laureates around the country. Before turning to mixing he was a boom operator and has worked on numerous network TV series, documentary projects and features. A long-time member and former Board member of the Cinema Audio Society, he was instrumental in creating the CAS Technical Awards. James wrote the Foreword to the authorized biography of his Oscar-winning father, “Dervish Dust: The Life and Words of James Coburn” (Potomac Books, 2021) and is currently working on a new book about the art of Production Sound mixing.

Benjamin B. Cohen

Benjamin Cohen is an award-winning writer, professor, and performer. In his writing, Benjamin likes to play with dark and challenging material from an honest, comedic perspective. Raised in Atlanta and based in Brooklyn, Benjamin worked on projects selected by the Austin Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and The High Museum of Art. He also appears in the Emmy-Nominated PBS short documentary, “What Makes a Great Book.” Benjamin has taught Writing and Film History at NYFA since 2012 and is an active member of the WGA-E. When he’s not writing, teaching, or performing comedy on the NYC stage, you can find Benjamin with his lovely wife and two dogs.

Adam Coplan

Adam Coplan’s resume boasts senior executive posts with three of the most prolific producers in the industry, Joel Silver, Scott Rudin and John Davis. Beginning as Story Editor at Silver, then running development at Rudin as Vice President before moving on to Davis, Adam worked on scores of critical and commercial hits such as The Matrix, Wonder Boys, The Truman Show, A Simple Plan, In & Out, Sleepy Hollow, I, Robot, Alien vs. Predator and Behind Enemy Lines among many others. Adam left to work as an independent producer, setting up Flash Gordon at Universal where he also produced The Express. Switching to the creative side, Adam wrote and directed the tragic feature film It’s Dark Here. Adam’s teaching began in UCLA’s Extension Program, where he honed his approach of mixing the academics with the practical. His first book, Being Professional, was published in 2016. Final Draft asked him to adapt his Road Map outlining system into a template for their software. After an adjunct position at Chapman and various guest lecturing spots, Adam settled in Miami and joined NYFA. He continues to write and has several projects in various stages of development.

Rick Curnutt

MFA in Film Directing, Chapman University; BA in Cultural Anthropology, Boston University. Joined Trench Film Group (Beijing) in 1998, and continued on as a cinematographer, editor, and director of various award-winning independent documentaries, films, and music videos over the next seven years in China. His film, Run China won the honor of “Top 10 Documentaries of the Year” at the Chinese National Documentary Society Film Festival in Guangzhou, 2005; and has aired on over 20 Chinese television networks. Directed short films Potty Talk, Alarm, and Free Lunch, which all went on to screen and garner awards at select film festivals around the globe. Free Lunch was also picked up by Franco-German TV Network “Arte” after screening in competition at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France.

Richard D’Angelo

Richard D’angelo, an award-winning line producer and production manager in film and television. A lifelong film devotee, he received both his BFA in Film Production and Master of Arts in Theater and Film Studies from Long Island University. He produced and directed his graduate thesis screenplay, ‘First Person,’ into an award winning feature film. Richard’s two decades plus of experience in the entertainment industry have run the gamut from feature films to live event productions as well many industrial and commercial projects working as a producer, director, and editor. Recently Richard produced ‘The Cathedral,’ which had its world premiere at the 78th Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at Sundance, for director Ricky D’Ambrose who won the John Cassavetes Award for the film.

Darren Dean

Darren Dean is an Award-winning American Producer, Writer and Director. Working in the realm of micro-budget and social justice films, he has helmed works by renowned directors Sean Baker, Rashaad Ernesto Green, Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra. His films have won awards at Sundance, have been nominated for Oscars and have won Clio Awards. He is currently hard at work at the new features THE END STAGE OF STARS (dir Rachel Mason’s follow-up to CIRCUS OF BOOKS); JACK-BE-NIMBLE (dir Alex Thompson’s follow-up to SAINT FRANCES); MO (dir Chris Brown’s follow-up to THE OTHER KIDS); as well as the debut feature AMERICAN 11 (dir Shayain Lakhani). Dean will also begin prepping his feature directing debuts in 2021, THE APOLOGY and the Spanish-language NO SUGAR TONIGHT.

Andi Deliana

Andi Deliana is mostly known as a producer for various fiction and documentary features like “Amok” (screened at Cannes 2017), “Covenant” (winner of Best Canadian FIlm at Edmonton Fear Film Fest 2018), “Back to Q82” (Netflix 2021), or the critically acclaimed “The Perfect Gangster” (Nominated as Best American Indi Documentary at Fort Lauderdale Film Festival 2019).

Michael DeMeritt

Michael DeMeritt is a graduate of Michigan State University. After spending five years as a Studio Coordinator and Producer at United Artists, he was accepted into the Director’s Guild of America Producers Training Program (DGA Trainee). He began his journey in the DGA as a 2nd AD and steadily advanced from 2nd AD to 1st AD over the course of 11 consecutive years working on two Star Trek TV series: “Voyager” (all seven seasons) and “Enterprise” (all four seasons). With extensive DGA credits, he has also taken on the role of Producer for various projects, ranging from commercials to feature films. One of his recent accomplishments includes completing production on the feature film “Rock and Doris Try to Write a Movie” in early 2023, scheduled for release in 2024. Notable producing credits include the feature film “The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster,” TV series “Gen’s Guiltless Gourmet” and “Kitchen Academy,” and numerous commercials. Among his AD credits are “Make It or Break It,” “Vegas,” “Close to Home,” and “Citizen Cohen.” Michael has been published as an author in gaming magazine “Knights of the Dinner Table” and the “DGA Quarterly.” He has received awards for his copywriting skills and continues to serve as a script consultant for projects in development.

Kevin DiNovis

For the past twenty-five years, Kevin DiNovis has worked as a screenwriter and film director. His debut feature, Surrender Dorothy (1998), won multiple awards, including the Grand Jury prize for Best Feature at the Slamdance, Chicago Underground, and New York Underground Film Festivals. His subsequent work includes the political satire Death & Texas (2004), which stars Academy Award nominees Charles Durning and Mary Kay Place.

As a writer, DiNovis adapted Mary Higgins Clark’s bestselling thriller Loves Music, Loves to Dance for USA Networks. He was the first writer selected to inaugurate Marvel Studio’s Writers Program. In addition to adapting two features and one short subject for the celebrated ‘MCU’, DiNovis participated in an uncredited dialogue polish of the script for Thor.

In 2019, DiNovis presented his paper entitled “‘The Other Fellow’: ‘Transference of Identity’ in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s Conference in Atlanta, GA. He followed that up at SAMLA’s 2022 Conference with a paper entitled, “A Little Help from His Friends: The Expanding Role of MI-6 in the New 007 Cinematic Universe.”

Randall Dottin Chair of Screenwriting

Randall Dottin is a writer/director who works both in documentary and narrative fiction. His Columbia University MFA thesis film, A-ALIKE, was licensed for a two-year broadcast run by HBO and has won numerous awards, including the DGA Award for Best African American Student Filmmaker and the 2004 Student Academy Award for Best Narrative Film. In 2009, Randall was named by IndieWire Magazine as one of the Top Ten New Voices in Black Cinema. From 2012 to 2015, Randall wrote and directed branded content for AOL.COM, Toyota, and Essence Magazine. Randall’s short film Lifted, was sponsored by Fox Searchlight’s program for emerging directors, the Fox Searchlab. Lifted premiered on CBS in 2015. His documentary series The House I Never Knew is currently in production and explores how six families in Chicago, Houston, and Boston fight against becoming casualties of a housing segregation policy. The House I Never Knew (nee The Chicago Franchise) was chosen to participate in IFP’s Spotlight on Documentaries Program in 2018. Last year, the series received a grant from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund.

Josh Eiserike

MFA in Film Production, USC
Josh Eiserike is a writer/cartoonist who has written for television shows such as Legacies (CW), Warigami (CW SEED), and G.I. Joe: Renegades (HUB). Additionally, Josh has sold a show to POP TV and a couple of TV movies. He has also written and published several comic books, including The Very Final Last Girls from Darby Pop Publishing and Charm City from Scout Comics. Originally from Washington, D.C., Josh previously worked as a newspaper reporter, covering everything from Congress to the Warped Tour. Other writing credits include MAD Magazine. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches Sequential Art, Feature Workshops, TV Pilot, Elements of Screenwriting, Story Generation, as well as Online Screenwriting.

Herschel Faber

Herschel Faber has worked extensively in film and entertainment. He had a number of screenplays optioned and made, one being the cult hit Mac and Devin go to High School, (Anchor Bay) which stars Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, and Mike Epps. Faber wrote, directed, and produced Cavemen, a feature-length romantic comedy starring Skylar Astin (Pitch Perfect), Camilla Belle (10,000 B.C.), Chad Michael Murray (One Tree Hill), and Jason Patric (The Lost Boys). The film was released theatrically by Well Go USA in 2014 and on VOD in partnership with Warner Brothers. Faber relocated to Miami to make Florida-centric films under his Fascination Films production banner.

Faber received his MFA in Film from Columbia University, where he won the “Zaki Gordon Award” for screenwriting and placed at the semi-finalist level in the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship and Austin Film Festival.

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