Page 330 – NYFA

NYFA LA Screens ‘Burning Palms’ with Manager & Producer Oren Segal

On February 12th, the New York Film Academy hosted a Q&A at Warner Bros. Studios with renowned talent manager and movie producer Oren Segal. Beforehand, the students watched Burning Palms (2010), the latest film produced by Oren on the big screen, starring Zoe Saldana, Rosamund Pike, Paz Vega, Lake Bell, Nick Stahl, Jamie Chung, Anson Mount and Dylan McDermott. The film contains five connected shorts about lifestyles taken to the extreme in Los Angeles with the tagline, “Five stories that will mess you up for life.” Dark, twisted, and unforgivingly original, the movie set the tone for a one-on-one with a Hollywood player equally as refreshing.

Oren began by explaining how he became involved with Burning Palms. As fate would have it, he befriended writer and director Christopher Landon’s sister in an art class. She told him, “You’ve got to read my brother’s script. It’s really crazy but I think you’ll like it.” After reading the script and meeting with Christopher, Oren felt he had found something very unique that could break the Hollywood mold. Oren teamed up with Christopher as producer of the project and helped him hone what were eight connected shorts into the five most cinematic ones. After five years of arduously searching for financing he finally raised private equity and made the film.

Within the entertainment world, Oren climbed the ranks quickly by taking on a string of internships right out of high school with the William Morris talent agency, director Nancy Meyers, producer David Friendly, and director and producer Gregory Hoblit. After college, Oren decided to work in management because he wanted to represent actors, writer, and directors as well as produce. Oren joined Media Talent Group, where he was soon promoted to a manager and represented actors, writers and directors that included Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. After seven years, Oren partnered with manager Carol Bodie to form Radius Entertainment where they work with a list of talent that includes actors Kim Basinger, Kate Bosworth, Shannyn Sossamon, Paz Vega, writers Milo Addica and Neil Strauss, and directors Peter Bogdanovich and Michael Polish.

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Former NYFA Students Awarded Tribeca Film Grant to Direct Feature

Former New York Film Academy students, Sara Seligman and Thomas Bond, were awarded a grant from the Tribeca Film Institute for their script, Falcon Lake. With the help of the grant, Sara Seligman will be directing the feature. The story focuses on Ester, who runs a bed-and-breakfast near the USA/Mexico border with her overbearing mother, Teresa. The two of them save their earnings in the hopes of leaving the town behind. However, after two drug runners invade their home, the women are faced with a choice, one that is further complicated by a terrifying secret the women share – one that will ultimately reveal who really is in charge of the house.

NYFA Grads’ Acclaimed Film ‘7 Boxes’ Released in North America

The New York Film Academy is proud of its graduates, Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori, whose electrifying debut film 7 Boxes recently had its North American theatrical and VOD release.

The film, produced by Breaking Glass Pictures and Shoreline Entertainment, had its world premiere at the International Film Festival of San Sebastian to audience and critical acclaim and broke box office records in its native Paraguay. An official selection of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, and a favorite at the Miami, Edinburgh, and Palm Springs Film Festivals, indieWIRE hailed the Paraguayan action-thriller as “The Fast and the Furious with wheelbarrows.”

Víctor, a 17-year-old wheelbarrow delivery boy, dreams of becoming famous and covets a fancy TV set in the infamous Mercado 4. He’s offered a chance to deliver seven boxes with unknown contents in exchange for a quick $100. With a borrowed cell phone the contractor uses to tell him the way, Víctor embarks on the journey. Crossing the eight blocks of the market seemed easy but things get complicated along the way. There is something in those boxes that starts a high-speed wheelbarrow chase in the secret and gloomy corridors of the market. Without even realizing, Víctor and his pursuers will get involved in a crime of which they know anything.

Following its Paraguayan premiere, 7 Boxes edged out Titanic as the most successful film in Paraguay’s box-office history – an unprecedented feat given the limited audiovisual production in the country. Coming on the heels of internationally successful features such as Hamaca Paraguaya and Cuchillo de Palo, 7 Boxes could truly signify an international breakout moment for Paraguayan cinema.

Acting for Film Grad Stars in Vincent Pastore’s Off-Broadway Play

Debora and Vincent Pastore — Alicia Harding, Debora Rodrigues, and Vincent Pastore (left to right)

Acting for Film alumnus and Brazilian native, Debora Rodrigues, has kept herself busy since graduating last September at the New York Film Academy. Coming out of acting school, Debora teamed up with classmate and director, Josh Chung, in his short film Whistle, which was awarded a “Best Shorts Award.” From there, she was cast in the film How to Kill My Boyfriend, which premiered at the Navi Mumbai International Film Festival.

Her versatility as an actress led her to the role of Jo-Jo in the off-Broadway play Wild Children, written by Sopranos’ star, Vincent Pastore. The play revolves around Vincent’s memories of owning and running the club, ‘Crazy Horse Café’ in Westchester County, New York. While most of the cast, which starred Lou Martini, Jr. and Alicia Harding, were on board from the beginning, Debora had to beat out over 400 actresses in a competitive audition process. “I’m so glad I got this role, because it changed who I am as an artist,” says Debora. “It made me embrace all kinds of women.” Debora’s run on Wild Children ran for sixteen straight days and was well received by her peers and critics.

Debora’s passion for the arts has recently inspired her to start dabbling in writing. She says she’s currently working on two short film scripts in the hopes of encouraging others to ‘think differently.’

“If you trust yourself and use the skills you’ve learned at NYFA, you can make it happen.”

Debora also landed a spot in an international commercial for FourSquare, which you can check out below.

NewFilmmakers LA

Here is an exciting opportunity we stumbled across which may be of interest, but not limited to, our New York Film Academy Los Angeles students. Founded in 2007, NewFilmmakers LA Film Festival (NFMLA) has screened over 750+ films from over 43 countries. NFMLA boasts over 20,000 supporters in the LA community! The monthly festival provides a forum where filmmakers can be recognized with partners such as Sony Pictures Entertainment, Film LA, Wells Fargo, SAG-AFTRA and LA Weekly. NFMLA is proud to offer more than $60,000 USD in prizes, each year — including $3,500 in cash awards.

For your chance to gain “reel” exposure in LA, submit to NewFilmmakers LA today at www.NFMLA.org.

Broadcast Journalism Grad Helps Bring Olympic Stories To U.S. Television Viewers

Sergei Ivonin came to the New York Film Academy to learn the skills essential to becoming a successful broadcast journalist. Thanks to his hard work, and his intensive course-of-study, Sergei was hired by NBC News. Now he is using the skills he first learned at NYFA to bring the story of the 2014 Winter Olympics to millions of American television viewers.

As a producer at Dateline NBC, Sergei has worked on a wide range of assignments, including criminal justice stories as well as a remembrance of Grammy-Award winning singer and actress Whitney Houston.

In Sochi he was on-the-ground well before the actual start of the Olympic Games, working on the kind of moving personal stories that NBC is famous for.

Following the Olympics, Sergei will be returning to the New York Film Academy for an exciting Q&A session with NYFA faculty, current and former Broadcast Journalism students, as well as potential students. The session will take place at 1pm on Thursday March 13 on the NYFA Battery Place campus, and will be moderated by Broadcast Journalism Chair Bill Einreinhofer.

Which Software Does NYFA Animation Use for Modeling?

Over the past few years there have been huge leaps and bounds in the development of modeling software, especially for us folks doing organic modeling– such as monsters, animals and other strange creatures!

At the New York Film Academy Animation School we have traditionally based our organic and hard surface modeling on Maya software. Maya is pretty much an industry standard and is used at places like Pixar Studios, who work intimately with Autodesk, the developers of Maya software, to constantly refine and improve its abilities.

More recently, we have introduced ZBrush for high-end organic and hard surface modeling. I especially enjoy using it for concepting – by that I mean quickly sketching in 3-D format ideas for characters and environments.

ZBrush is not for everybody because it’s quite a steep learning curve, and it is very different from traditional modeling software. I often tell my students that it was probably created by a race of insectoid aliens! That said, it is incredibly powerful and well worth the time invested in learning it, if you are interested in CG modeling for a profession or if you intend to make it a significant part of your 3-D focus.

We are also using Mudbox as I and many other fellow professionals believe it to be superior for texturing, especially in relationship to Zbrush. The reason being, Zbrush paints individual polygons, which means that the model has to be divided up into many millions of polygons in order to achieve the desired resolution for creating a texture map. This is in contrast to Mudbox, which does not need the surface to be divided up into such small units, and is more efficient for texture painting.

For smaller studios, especially in New York, Mudbox may be more frequently used (even for modeling). Mudbox is more user friendly (the hotkeys and user interface are very similar to those in Maya) and is much easier to learn. In the long run, these are just tools and it is a person using those tools that really makes the big difference. Ultimately, I am content to let my students choose the software they wish to use in order to create the models they require for their projects.

-Robert Appleton, Chair of NYFA Animation School

NYFA Documentary Alumni Highlights

The Academy Award nomination of Director of Photography and Co-Producer Muhammed Hamdy‘s (’12) The Square is just the tip of the iceberg of Documentary Dept. Alumni success stories.

Two more noteworthy graduates are giving back to their alma mater by investigating how their fellow alumni are making use of their New York Film Academy educations. So far, the resulting online series by award-winning Producer/Director, Maria Stanisheva (’12) and globetrotting Cinematographer, Marco Vitale (’11) features stories about Louis Mole (ʼ12), who produced and shot the television series, “Serial Swindlers,” a year after graduating; Todd Leatherman (ʼ12) who worked on two of this yearʼs Sundance selections; Susanne Dollnig (ʼ12) of Austria, who was promoted to Editor at The House of Trim only seven months after graduating and Louisa Merino (ʼ11) currently Senior Editor and Director at David Lynch Foundation.

Note: By clicking on the students’ names above you can watch short interview pieces (like the one below) created by Maria Stanisheva.

Nigerian Grad Produces First Feature ‘The Date’

We recently caught up with Emem Ekpenyong, a 4-Week Producing graduate from New York Film Academy, after coming across her production company’s trailer for her upcoming feature film, The Date. Emem enrolled in NYFA back in July 2013 after producing a short film called In Iredu, which was an African adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The short film was shortlisted (Top 10) in The Afrinolly Short Film Competition.

“The lessons [from NYFA] are too numerous to list, but my classes in Producer’s Craft, Pitching, Line Producing Essentials and Entertainment Law were particularly helpful,” says Emem.

Through Emem’s production company, Blacreek Pictures, she initially started on The Date as a short film project but it gradually metamorphosed into the production of a fast-paced comedy where the main character experiences a series of unfortunate events within a day’s time. “I have been involved in every stage of production, including conceptualization,” said Emem. “I was a producer and was even coaxed by our director to play a role in the movie.”

The entire cast and crew of the film are native Nigerians. Emem hopes The Date will prove to the world that quality filmmaking does exist in Nigeria. “Being Blacreek’s first feature, we want to be seen as the avant-garde breed of this generation, poised to go the extra mile in bringing forth the best in motion picture production and other related media works.”

Blacreek is interested in international distribution for The Date, but for now their focus is on Nigeria and West Africa.