Faculty Directory

Maria Del Bagno

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Graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, apprenticed under renowned master choreographer, Jaime Rogers, and the “Father of Jazz Dance,” Luigi. Over 25 years of experience as a dance instructor. Named one of L.A.’s top choreographers by L.A. Jazz Dance Foundation.

Michael DeMeritt

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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

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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.”

John Dion

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MFA in Directing, University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts; BA in Visual Arts-Media, University of California San Diego; 8-Week Program, New York Film Academy. Feature, series, and short film credits with Hallmark. Extensive film festival play including Palm Springs, Clermont-Ferrand, and Austin. BAFTA LA and Emmy Foundation College Television Awards student nominations. Short film television distribution on Canal+, Shorts International, and Mediaset.

Debra Dragotto

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MFA in Screenwriting, UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film, & New Media; BA in Drama, Hofstra University. Debra has studied Shakespeare at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and Film Production at the School of Visual Arts, as well as private study with some of the leading names in the acting world. She has won numerous Drama-Logue Awards for stage directing, as well as the Jack K. Sauter Award for Artist Merit from UCLA, where she was also selected to direct her film after a year-long elimination process. Debra has credits in Acting, Directing for stage, film, and television, as well as for Casting Director, and Television Producer.

Frederic Durand

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Frederic Durand graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs and studied for a year at NYC’s Cooper Union while earning his Master’s degree. He has worked on both animated and feature films in addition to his commercial work for over 20 years and has served at such companies as Disney Animation, Sony Imageworks, DreamWorks, Jim Henson’s Workshop, MPC, the Mill, and Digital Domain. He also co-founded Noroc Studio and is the lighting and shading supervisor at the Los Angeles company Mousetrappe. His prior film work includes Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Tomb Raider 1 and 2, SharkTales, Speed Racer, 2012, Beowulf, Monster House, Chicken Little, and many more.

Having authored a number of educational DVDs that instructed viewers in the subject of computer-generated illumination, Durand is an expert lighting artist employing a methodology that is as creative as it is technical and utilizes core elements of cinematography. In addition to teaching at NYFA, Durand also serves on the faculty the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, the Global Cinematography Institute, the Otis College of Design, and the University of Southern California.

Josh Eiserike

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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.

Kadina de Elejalde

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Kadina de Elejalde is an actress and Acting teacher who has appeared in numerous films and television shows, most notably in HBO’s Indictment: The McMartin Trial, Richard the Second, and The Haunting. She has also worked extensively in the theater in both Los Angeles and New York; Her credits include “Another Part of the House” by Migdalia Cruz at Classic Stage Company, and “Bicycle Country” by Nilo Cruz at The Strasberg Theater in Los Angeles. She is committed to working on new plays, and was the recipient of a Dramalogue award for her work in The Padua New Playwright’s Festival. Presently, she is an Acting Instructor at New York Film Academy, but has also taught at Columbia College Hollywood and Woodbury University in Los Angeles. She recently was interviewed on a podcast series called Best In Fest which is titled “The Essence of Character.” She holds a Masters Degree in Acting from the Yale School of Drama.

Danielle Evenson

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MA in Communication, USC
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.

Tim Fannon

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MFA in Acting, Brooklyn College; BS in Theater, Skidmore College; trained at the Royal National Theatre and the British Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Extensive stage experience and commercials; film and television roles include “Kidnap”, “Bar Flies”, “After I’m Dead”, and “Review with Forrest MacNeil”. Founding member/artistic director of Fovea Floods Theater, and company member of Moving Arts.

Lance Fisher

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Lance Fisher has been in the camera dept for over 35 years. He has worked in all formats of the Motion Picture Industry – Features, Episodics, Documentaries, Commercials, Music Videos, News… if it had a camera, he was there. He’s worked at all the major studios and came up through the camera dept, beginning as a film loader and 2nd assistant.

He specializes in developing students’ skills by teaching the fundamentals of camera and lighting and the ‘grammar’ of visual story telling. He has taught students at all academic levels and enjoys watching their excitement as new techniques are acquired with real hands-on training.
When Lance is not shooting, he flies helicopters professionally!

David Fratto

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Executive Producer, BBC Worldwide; Sr. Director of Development, Scholastic Inc.; Director of Development, Vivendi Universal Games, Executive Producer, Knowledge Adventure; Education: Harvard University, BA.

Colette Freedman

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MAT in Drama, Colgate University
Screenwriter, playwright, novelist, and actress. Colette has written the Lifetime film Sister Cities (Jacki Weaver, Alfred Molina, Stana Katic) and twelve other made-for-television films with her writing partner Brooke Purdy. Her feature films include Meli (starring Wendie Malick), And Then There Was Eve (2017 LA Muse Jury Prize Winner at LA Film Festival) and Miles Underwater. Colette is an internationally-produced playwright with over 35 produced plays, voted “One of 50 to Watch” by The Dramatists Guild. Plays include Serial Killer Barbie, The Affair, and Blind Spots (Encore Award 2018 Hollywood Fringe fest) and the upcoming Mozart2 the Musical and Amelia the Musical. She has written ten published novels, including the thriller The Thirteen Hallows (Tor Publishing) with #1 New York Times author Michael Scott; the YA book Anomalies with Sadie Turner (Select Books); and the legendary Steve Dorff memoir I Wrote That One Too (Backbeat Books). Freedman has co-produced several independent films, including Quality Problems (Freestyle Media, 2017 Best Feature, Women Texas Film Fest), Dancer in Danger (Lifetime) and Dangerous Cheaters (Lifetime). As an actress, she has worked on many television shows, including That 70s Show, The Young and the Restless, and JAG, as well as several independent films. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Feature Workshops, Storytelling With Purpose, Script To Screen, Playwriting, and Scene Study.

Richard Friedman

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Richard Friedman is a director, writer, and producer of motion pictures, television movies, episodic TV, network specials, and music videos. Richard has directed and produced 15 feature films which include “BORN”, starring Alison Brie, “Thou Shalt Kill” starring Vince Lozano; “Acts of Desperation, Starring Paul Sorvino and Jason Gedrick; and many more. As a television Director, Richard’s accomplishments include the extremely successful movies for network television: “Shadow of Stranger,” starring Joan Chen, Emma Samms, Parker Stevenson, and Michael Easton, which he also wrote, and “Someone’s Watching,” starring Daniel J. Travanti, Chris Noth, Joan Van Ark, and Rick Springfield. A veteran of over thirty-five episodes of Network and Syndicated series TV, Richard has directed multiple episodes of Warner Bros.’“Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” “Baywatch Nights,” “Silk Stalkings,” “Friday the 13th, The TV Series,” “Tales From the Darkside,” and “Monsters.”

Richard’s additional writing and producing credits include three theatrically released features:
“Street Knight,” “Scared Stiff,” and “Deathmask,” a psychological thriller, starring Danny Aiello. Richard is currently in pre-production on his next film, “Hyena”. Richard spent years on the cutting edge of music video, having directed Billy Joel in his video, “You’re Only Human,” a passionate statement against teen suicide which won the Presidential
Medal of Honor. Richard’s other directorial music video credits include numerous high profile
artists and popular tracks.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Richard holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Brooklyn College. He then went on to New York University’s prestigious Graduate School of Film where he received a three-year Master of Fine Arts Degree in Motion Picture Directing and Film Production. Richard also taught Directing at UCLA and is currently an Adjunct Professor at New York Film Academy.

Richard is a member of the Director’s Guild of America, Writer’s Guild of America, and
Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and currently resides in Los Angeles California with
his wife Monica and twin teens, Emma and Max.

Nedra Gallegos

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Nedra is an Instructor at the New York Film Academy-Los Angeles, where she teaches History of Acting, History of Theatre, History of Women in Film, TV and Theatre and Psychology of Production. Her background as an actor, director and teaching artist in New York City and Los Angeles uniquely qualifies her to work with students from all walks of life and backgrounds.

Matt Galuppo Chair of Media Arts Department

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Matt has been working in entertainment for over 10 years beginning his career as an intern on Inception. From there he worked on a dozen or so films as a previs artist, including The Amazing Spider-Man II, Warcraft, Poltergeist, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After that Matt began his directing career, making commercials for Fortune 500 companies including Toyota, Fiat, Netflix, and Nintendo. Spots, he produced, have garnered hundreds of millions of views and earned American Advertising Award, Muse Creative Award, among others. As a copywriter he has worked on Superbowl spots for brands like Verizon, Microsoft, and the NFL. Matt recently began his TV career selling animated pilots to COMEDY CENTRAL and SYFY.

More than all of this, Matt is most proud of the accomplishments of his students. In Matt’s 7 years of teaching animation his students have gone onto work on academy award winning teams, make effects for tent pole franchises, like Justice League and Star Wars, and even push the industry the forward helping create the industry standard software used by artists around the globe.