NYFA
Faculty Directory

Faculty Directory

Sally Chun

Sally Chun earned her M.Ed. in Postsecondary Administration & Student Affairs at USC and her B.A. in Communication at UCSB. Her area of study targets student affairs – exploring the correlation between race and socioeconmic status vs. student success and experience in higher education. Prior to joining NYFA, she served as the Student Services Advisor for USC graduate students and as a Senior Seminar Instructor for the federal educational TRIO program – Upward Bound. Currently, she teaches LAS courses at the NYFA – Los Angeles campus and also serves the Academic Affairs Manager for BFA Filmmaking & BA Media Studies students.

Amina Cruz

Amina Cruz was born and lives in Los Angeles. She hitchhiked around the country before deciding to move to New York City, where she earned her BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design. She also holds a MFA from UCLA. Cruz’s work is held in various private collections and is a part of the Getty’s permanent collection. Her interests are based in queer culture, film/analog photography, and exploring the space between transformation and identity. Her current work explores the outsider cultures of brown queer punks throughout the Americas.

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.

Erin Coleman

Erin Coleman is a Los Angeles actor, director, teaching artist, and founding member of the nonprofit Future Artists of Los Angeles. She is passionate about empowering artists to turn their dreams into goals. Erin has taught at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts-Los Angeles, the New York Film Academy, and the Barnsdall Junior Arts Center. Her professional acting and performing credits span roles on FX, Showtime, Peacock, ABC, FOX, and NBC. She has performed at the Chicago Women’s Funny Festival, San Francisco SketchFest, and the Comedy Central Stage. She most recently directed the play Female Transport for the AADA Grad Play Festival and produced the world premiere of To Each Their Own.

Eric Conner

MFA, USC School of Cinema and Television
Eric has collaborated on screenplays with Robert Gardner (Writer, The Wedding Palace) and is developing a pilot with Hayden Black (Goodnight Burbank, Gen Zed). He is currently a regular contributor to ranker.com. As part of a team, he adapted the New York Times bestselling young-adult series Vampire Kisses and developed a feature film based on Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween Haunt. He currently hosts, produces and writes the podcast The Backlot for NYFA and was previously commissioned to write the original one-act play/short film The Also-Rans. He is the winner of the Sloan Award & Hamptons’ Writer’s Workshop for feature script Just Enough. He worked as a production manager on the documentary The Cutting Edge: The Story of Cinema Editing. His interview subjects include Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Sean Penn. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, he teaches TV Workshops, Introduction to Television, Rewriting, and Thesis Workshops.

Javier Costa

Steadicam operator with over 10 years professional experience in the camera department. Active member of the Society of Camera Operators, The Steadicam Guild, and IATSE Local 600. Credits include commercials for clients such as McDonald’s and Target, music videos for artists such as Ice Cube and Megadeath, operating Technocrane on the documentary “Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron”, and television shows including “Survivor”.

Merrilyn Crouch

Merrilyn Crouch received an MFA in Theater from The University of Southern California and has worked as an actor, writer and director in commericals, television, and film for over 20 years. Merrilyn has written, produced and directed promos for clients including CNN International, TNT, FOX, Discovery Channel, NUVO TV and others. She can be seen on the Food Network’s Good Eats in the recurring role as Alton Brown’s sister, Marsha.

Rick Curnutt Associate Chair of Film Arts Department (Filmmaking)

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.

Morgan Dameron

BA in Film & Television Production, USC
Morgan Dameron wrote, directed, and produced the feature film, Different Flowers. She previously worked at Bad Robot Productions on Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Trek Into Darkness. She has developed projects with Paul Feig’s Powderkeg Media, 3BlackDot, Olive Bridge Entertainment, and Very Big World. For the Screenwriting Department in LA, she teaches Art of the Pitch, The Business of Screenwriting, Script To Screen, Feature Workshops, Adaptation, Elements of Screenwriting, Story Generation. For the Producing Department she teaches Navigating The Industry online.

David D’Andrade

Instructor for Foundation Drawing, Storyboard Drawing, Principles of Visual Aesthetics, Life Drawing, Media and Culture

J. Claude Deering Acting for Film Instructor

BFA from Stella Adler Studios at NYU’s Tisch School. Theatre credits include two seasons at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. A member of Lincoln Center’s LCT Directors LAB. Film and TV credits include “Side Effects” (dir. Steven Soderbergh), “The Ugly Truth,” “Room 104” (HBO), “NCIS,” “Entourage,” “12 Deadly Days” (YouTube Red), and “Inside the Box” (ABC/Shondaland). Digital producer/writer/director for Funny or Die, CollegeHumor, MSN, Fullscreen, and Chiat/Day.

Nunzio DeFilippis Dean of Faculty, Co-Chair of Film Arts Department

MFA in Screenwriting, USC

Nunzio has worked in television, comics, film, and games for over two decades. Along with his writing partner (Christina Weir), he was a writer/producer on HBO’s Arliss and wrote for the Disney Channel series Kim Possible. They have had features optioned at Hollywood Pictures, Process Media, and Humble Journey Films, and developed a video game at Sony and a TV movie at Oxygen. He and his partner have written for the comics New X-Men, Adventures of Superman, Batman Confidential, and Dragon Age, among many others. They created the comic franchises Bad Medicine (developed at Closed On Mondays with NBC), The Amy Devlin Mysteries (developed as a TV series at E!), and Frenemy of the State (co-created with Rashida Jones, optioned as a feature film by Imagine Entertainment/Universal Pictures.). He serves as the Chair of Screenwriting and Dean of Faculty at NYFA LA, and for the Screenwriting Department, teaches Elements of Screenwriting, Feature Workshops, Sequential Art, Story Generation, Genre Studies, and Thesis Workshops.

Maria Del Bagno Acting for Film Instructor

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

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.”

John Dion Acting for Film Instructor

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.

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