Faculty Directory

Israel Gutierrez

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Israel Gutierrez is a Mexican American filmmaker with a background in film and video editing. He worked as an editor at NBCUniversal for E! Entertainment International and Telemundo International. As a filmmaker, he recently won Best Film Screenplay (Mexican American Film Festival 2022) and Best Short Drama (Official Latino Film Festival 2022) for his multi award-winning historical drama They Call Us Sediciosos. Iz wrote, directed, and edited the short as a proof-of-concept for a feature film and TV series.

Mentored by Oscar-winning screenwriter David S. Ward and former DGA president and director Martha Coolidge, he is the recipient of the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant for the short he wrote and directed Sin Frontera, an immigration love story, which screened at the SAG Foundation, won numerous drama awards including official selections in Academy accredited festivals.

Matt Harry

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MFA in Film Production, USC
Matt has been telling stories since he was 10 years old. He spent his early years writing newspaper articles for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and one-act plays before discovering filmmaking at Ohio University. He graduated cum laude with a BS in Television Production. He moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and received an MFA in Film Production. As a screenwriter, Matt’s work has been recognized by the Austin Film Festival, the FOX/NYTVF Comedy Script Contest, Script Pipeline, the Launchpad Manuscript Contest, and the Nicholl Fellowships. His first produced feature screenplay, FUGUE, landed on several top-ten lists, won Best Horror Film at the Mississippi Film Festival, and was picked up for distribution by GoDigital. His short film SUPER KIDS, which he wrote and co-directed, has over 6 million views on YouTube. His TV pilot MONSTER COPS was awarded Grand Prize in the Second City Original Sitcom Contest, and is currently in development. Matt has also published four novels, written and directed an immersive play, and created a card game called You Are a Filmmaker. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches Thesis Workshop, Transmedia, Feature Workshops, Script To Screen, Unscripted Storytelling, Adaptation, and Genre Studies. For the Producing Department, he teaches Producing Reality TV.

Brendan Hay

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BRENDAN HAY is a writer and producer for TV, film, comic books, and more. Most recently, he was an Executive Producer and writer on Gremlins: The Wild Batch and Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai for WB Animation/Max. Previously, he was the showrunner of Dawn of the Croods and Harvey Girls Forever!, both for DreamWorks Animation/Netflix. Brendan has also written for several other series, including Robot Chicken (2x Emmy nominated), The Simpsons, and Star Wars Detours. Also, Hay was a (Peabody Award winning) headline producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for most of the Bush administration, and a contributing writer to “America: The Book.” He has written pilots for Lucasfilm, WB Animation, Disney, ABC Family, DreamWorks Animation, Fox, and Nickelodeon. Brendan was once even called the “Best Svengali of Animation” by SF Weekly. He’s still not sure what that means, but chooses to take it as a compliment. On the print side, Hay has written comic books for DC Comics, Oni Press, and BOOM! Studios, and had his writing appear in magazines ranging from SPIN to Reader’s Digest. Brendan lives in Burbank, CA with his author/journalist wife, twins, a pair of pugs, and a cat named Gremlin.

Heather Huntington

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MAPH in Literature, University of Chicago
Danielle Evenson & Heather Huntington are two halves of one set of headphones. The podcast writers have been featured in Deadline, WhoHaHa, Podcast Delivery, PodFluence, Audio Drama Debut, Fiction Podcast Weekly, Pajiba and Broadway World. When they’re not knee deep in sound cues, they also write for TV and film, including The New Adventures of Old Christine, Noggin’s Tales From The Playground, PBS’s Frankenstein MD, MGM’s Craft, Cafe of Love, for Reel One and a Christmas series for Disney. Their audio series, Up a River for Aural Stories launched this summer, and their series A Midsemester Night’s Dream starring Bridgerton’s Charithra Chanran will be released this fall. They teach together (as they write together) for Screenwriting LA in classes like Podcasting and Storytelling with Purpose.

Greg Johnson

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MFA in Film & Television, USC
Greg is the screenwriter of THE LAST SON (2021), a western-action feature film starring Sam Worthington, Machine Gun Kelly, Heather Graham, Thomas Jane, and directed by Tim Sutton. His newest film, OLD GUY (2024) finished production in 2023 and stars Christoph Waltz, Cooper Hoffman, Lucy Liu and is directed by Simon West. Previously, Greg worked with 20th Century Fox Studios to develop four original features including an alternative version of the Fantastic Four franchise called DOCTOR DOOM. He has also done assignments for Universal, Davis Entertainment, and TIK Films. Greg is a two-time finalist in the Warner Brothers Television Writers’ Workshop. Currently, he is developing NESTED GAMES, an international action-adventure spy show with Bound Television. In the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches Elements of Screenwriting, Rewriting, Adaptation, Story Generation, Genre Studies, TV Pilot, and Feature Workshops.

Rafael Lessa

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Rafael Lessa is a filmmaker with over 14 years of experience working for players like Amazon and Netflix. He transitions between commercially successful TV projects and artistically relevant films on the international stage. His latest feature film as a screenwriter, “Rule 34”, won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno and has screened in multiple festivals such as Busan, Tallinn Black Nights, and Newfest. In addition, Rafael was the head writer and co-producer of the show “Lov3” for Amazon and won the Brazilian Writer’s Association award. He also wrote seasons one and two of “Samantha!”, a Netflix series. He’s also the head writer of “The Adventures of Jose and Durval” for Globo, the 4th biggest network in the world, and produced by Latin America powerhouse O2 Films (City of God). Rafael has also collaborated with filmmaker Alex Moratto as a screenplay consultant for his films awarded at the Independent Spirit Awards and Venice Film Festival. Rafael began his screenwriting career with the short “Tá,” winner of the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival. He holds an MFA degree with Honors from Columbia University and a joint MBA in the Business of Entertainment from the University of Southern California.

Ben Maraniss

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Ben has worked extensively with Spaceman Media and Scrollmotion, creating dozens of short films, commercials, and interstitials, for companies such as AMC, Comedy Central, MTV, and Super Deluxe. He received his MFA in Film and Television Writing from the University of Southern California. First Things Last, a narrative iPhone application he co-created at Scrollmotion, was featured at the American Film Institute’s 2009 DigiFest. The International Screenwriters Association named Ben’s one-hour drama Weimar the Pilot Grand Prize winner in the 2015 TRMS competition. Another hour-long drama, Secret & Confidential, was listed on the Tracking Board as one of the 100 best pilots of 2016. Currently, Ben is working with producer Fredrica Drotos on an original series Ivan’s Hammer. His articles on cinema and pop culture have been featured in the N+1 Film Review Supplement.

Carolyn McDonald

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Carolyn McDonald has worked in the publicity division of Warner Bros Television, served as a Creative Executive at Cinecom Entertainment, and served as Exective Vice President of Danny Glover’s Carrie Productions. She was the executive producer on TNT’s Emmy & Image Award-nominated Freedom Song (written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson) and HBO’s American Dream, which featured Wesley Snipes and won 4 Cable Ace Awards and an NAACP Image Award for Best Made-For-TV Movie. McDonald also produced, co-wrote, and directed P.N.O.K., featuring Elle Fanning and co-wrote Return Of The Sweetbirds for 20th Century Fox. She also adapted the book The Color Of Hope for her directing debut. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Online Screenwriting, Adaptation, Story Generation, and the Business of Screenwriting.

Chris Modoono

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BS, Babson College
Chris is the Co-Writer/Director of the feature Tenured for Fox Digital Studio, which premiered at the 2015 Tribeca film festival, and won the Audience Award at the Maui Film Festival. He is the Co-Writer/Director and Co-Creator of It’s a Hit! (Abby Elliott, Tim Matheson) for The Orchard, which premiered at SeriesFest Season 2 and won the Virgin Produced Award. Chris is the commercial director for Hungry Man Productions. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches Script To Screen, Transmedia, Web Series, Feature Workshops, and Rewriting.

Kenda Greenwood Moran

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MFA in Screenwriting, AFI
Kenda has worked in television for two decades. She was a showrunner on the first four seasons of MTV’s acclaimed documentary series Teen Mom, a producer/director on ABC’s Wife Swap, and an Executive Producer on Lifetime’s Married at First Sight and Bravo’s Love Without Borders. As a VP of Development at MTV, Kenda shepherded multiple unscripted and comedy series including The Middle of the Night Show. Kenda wrote the sci-fi short, Progeny, which won best student short at Screamfest 2019, and which she subsequently adapted into a feature which is in development with Buffalo 8 Productions. Her pilot script Tammany won the AFI Writer’s Room Ready Award in 2020, and she currently has an action-comedy series in development with Robert Cort Productions. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Unscripted Storytelling, The Business of Screenwriting, Scene Study, and Television Workshops.

Eric Nelson

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MFA in Screenwriting, American Film Institute.
Eric Nelson has developed film and television projects with Nickelodeon Original Movies, ABC/Disney Channel, 20th Century Fox, Smart Entertainment, and Underground Entertainment. He has written, developed, and produced for numerous branded content campaigns and video games. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches Thesis Workshops, Rewriting, Feature Workshops, TV Workshops, and Story Generation.

David O’Leary

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BA in Film and Cognitive Science, Vassar College
David is a film and TV writer/producer, whose recent credits include working as Consulting Producer/Writer on Season 3 of NBC’s “Law & Order: Organized Crime” in 2023. O’Leary also Created/Executive Produced the UFO drama series “Project Blue Book” starring Aidan Gillen (“Game of Thrones”), alongside Oscar-winning Robert Zemeckis, which ran on HISTORY for two seasons, aired in over 165 countries, and was the #1 new cable drama series of 2018/19. O’Leary has sold projects to TNT, Miramax, Universal TV, A+E Studios and others. As a film producer, he co-produced the reality-hopping sci-fi thriller feature “Parallel” (2020) released by Vertical Entertainment, and the Netflix supernatural hit film “Eli” (2019), both available on streaming now. David has worked as a Screenwriting and Producing Instructor at New York Film Academy (NYFA) in Los Angeles for over a decade. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches The Business of Screenwriting, Elements of Screenwriting, Genre Studies, Feature Workshops, and TV Pilot. For the Producing Department in LA, he teaches Marketing and Distribution.

Luisa Parnes

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MFA in Dramatic Writing (Screenwriting), NYU/Tisch
A screenwriter from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After graduating Law School in Rio, she pivoted into a career in Film and TV and never looked back. Currently a Script Consultant for Amazon Studios Originals – Brazil. In this role, Luísa serves as a story editor, working closely with multiple showrunners and creators, providing creative feedback during the development process. She’s also writing Buena Vida, a fun and gritty coming-of-age feature for Academy-Award nominated director Carlos Saldanha (Ferdinand, Rio, Ice Age), and Fox International Productions (a Disney company). Luísa wrote and directed the short film Learning to Ride, which was entered into eight festivals, and won Best Screenplay Award at the São Paulo Film Festival. She wrote a feature adaptation. Luisa’s first feature-film as a screenwriter, the Brazilian production Before I Forget (Antes Que Eu Me Esqueça, 2018, dir. Tiago Arakilian, co-produced by Fox International), premiered in theaters across Brazil in the Spring of 2018, and ran in the international festival circuit in the USA, China, Portugal, and France. It has since won multiple Juri and Audience awards to date, including Best Movie at the Thai International Film Festival, and Best Movie at the Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival, and was especially revered in the 2018 Santa Barbara Film Festival. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Elements of Screenwriting, Storytelling with Purpose, Script To Screen, and Feature Workshops.

Christopher Pettoni Director of Youth & Special Programs

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Christopher Pettoni is the Director of Youth & Special Programs at New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus, where he also teaches Screenwriting. He earned a BFA in Film and Television from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a Minor in Producing as well as an MFA in Screenwriting from California State University Northridge. Chris also studied directing at the prestigious FAMU academy in Prague and acting at the Stella Adler Academy of Acting & Theatre in Los Angeles. As a writer and filmmaker, his work has been recognized in contests and exhibited at film festivals as well as on major television networks. He’s been a member of the NYFA community since 2016 and enjoys helping artists of all ages discover and refine their creative voices.

Jenni Powell

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Jenni Powell is the Emmy Award-winning producer of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Welcome to Sanditon, lonelygirl15, Emma Approved, and The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy. For two years she was Director of Content and Social Media for VidCon and was a producer at Felicia Day’s YouTube Premium Channel Geek & Sundry, where she produced the Geekie Award-Winning Talkin’ Comics Weekly. She was Head of Production for NewMediaRockstars (rebranded to NewRockstars after her tenure) and is now tapping into her deep love of role-playing games, which she has been playing for over 20 years, by creating strategies for translating them from the game table to a consumable and entertaining visual medium. She is also a Faculty member of the New York Film Academy where she teaches Story Generation, New Media, and Transmedia (tabletop games, role-playing games, web series, and more).

Marissa Read

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Marissa is a muli-hyphante who aims to create material she can direct and act in. She first accomplished this goal when she, along with her writing partner Selyna Warren, made their first sell to AwesomenessTV in the form of a half hour streaming show called “Foursome”. Foursome ran for four seasons, broke YouTubeOriginals’ record for longest running series, and garnered over 95 million views. Marissa then went on to sell television shows and features to Nickelodeon, Tristar, American High, Sony, and more. Currently, Marissa is working alongside Cobia Kai’s Counterbalance and Sony Studios on a True Crime dramady titled, Bad Apple. On the feature side, Marissa is in development with Jordan Kerner on a kids and family Halloween movie. Marissa and Selyna’s feature, Bat Mitzvah, was just announced as a finalist for Tribeca’s Untold Stories Million Dollar Grant. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, Marissa teaches Comedy Writing, Scene Study, TV Workshops, and Web Series.