New York Film Academy (NYFA) was excited to welcome film & TV director MARCUS STOKES as part of The 20/20 Series, created by NYFA’s Creative Director of Filmmaking and Cinematography, Liz Hinlein. The conversation was moderated by Hinlein and was held virtually, allowing individuals to join NYFA and the special guests from all over the world.

The 20/20 Series, created by Hinlein, is a virtual pop-up event that takes us into the homes, hubs, and workspaces of an array of dynamic, creative visionaries to allow for relaxed, engaging conversations on craft, creation, and artistic vision.

Marcus Stokes worked as a computer graphics artist at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). While at ILM, Stokes created groundbreaking visual effects for blockbuster films including Star Wars Episode I, Minority Report, and The Mummy. He then moved to Los Angeles and supervised visual effects for The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix: Revolutions, I Robot, and Serenity.

Stokes officially began his directorial career when he joined the Director’s Guild of America as a commercial director and created ads for clients including GMC, Nissan, and Walt Disney Pictures. Soon after, he realized his true passion for narrative filmmaking and began creating his own content. His very first film as writer/director, The Catalyst, was acquired by HBO and aired on their networks for two years. He has since gone on to direct shows including Criminal Minds, 911, The Flash, Station 19, and The Astronauts.

Stokes joined the conversation from Canada where he was currently preparing to shoot episodes for the upcoming season of The CW’s popular series The Flash. Stokes spoke with Hinlein about how his VFX background at ILM exposed him to the filmmaking process and granted him facetime with some of the business’s most talented directors. It was this exposure to the role that allowed Stokes to be confident to transfer his skills for VFX and filmmaking to pursue becoming a director himself, citing mentors F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) and Tim Story (Fantastic Four) as his mentors.

“One time, Tim [Story] taught me the importance of saying ‘I don’t know’ on set. Sometimes you need to know the importance of saying it. He would also say ‘I’m not ashamed to dance like a chicken if it will get my movie made,’ so sometimes you have to take the ego out of it [directing].”

When it comes to prep, Stokes is as meticulous as they come. He shared his screen with the audience, showing what a typical blocking would look like ahead of shooting for a scene, noting the camera angles and potential movements that needed to be captured. “I block every scene I work on. I am a Black director and I feel like I have to be exceptional. It’s also super important and you go on set prepared and see what happens. If it all falls apart, you at least have something to look at.”

In addition to blocking, Stokes also stressed the importance for directors to understand their actors. “Actors are told when to show up, how to look, and how to deliver their lines. They’re told everything, but the only thing they have control over is their attitude. So you give them control and when they say ‘I don’t want to stand here,’ for example.” It’s about picking your battles, but more importantly understanding that your actors are going through a lot and as the director, you need to acknowledge that. ” You got to know who you’re up against.

New York Film Academy would like to thank Marcus Stokes for taking the time out of shooting The Flash to join the NYFA global community to discuss film directing for The 20/20 Series.

These guests are not faculty and do not teach at NYFA, but they have appeared to share their stories and experience with our students. As guest speakers are scheduled based on their availability, NYFA cannot guarantee whether a guest speaker will visit during a student’s attendance or who that guest speaker may be. This guest speaker forum is not part of any NYFA curriculum and attendance at guest speaker events is purely voluntary. Students should be aware that guest speaker events do not represent a job opportunity nor are they intended to provide industry connections.

New York Film Academy is excited to announce that alum Rajni Mysore Chamaraj, along with her sister, Shynica Mysore Chamaraj, have been selected to participate in the novel Stars Collective program and will be supported with mentoring from Hollywood luminaries, funding, and creative resources from Starlight.

Founded by Starlight Media CEO Peter Luo (producer of “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Marshall,” “Midway”, etc). the Stars Collective program supports young emerging filmmakers and artists and heightens diversity in the global entertainment ecosystem with potential funding of up to $100 million collectively. The esteemed group of Stars Collective mentors include director Sam Raimi, Chinese actor Xiaoming Huang, and producers Donna Gigliotti, Gianni Nunnari, Chris Lee, Sanping Han, Paula Wagner, Patrick Wachsberger, Eric Heumann and Liming Ke.

“As we wade through the film industry looking for a middle ground between our creative expression and the logistical roadblocks, initiatives like these give artists a launchpad and opens up the industry to a more diverse range of content and transforms the ecosystem of both the makers and the audience,” shared Chamaraj. “Collectively, I believe the media industry has just started to come of age and it’s a great time to jump on to this bandwagon of independent filmmaking.”

Chamaraj is director, editor, and screenwriter, as well as a Film & Media Production MA alum from NYFA’s Los Angeles campus. Her film The Day I Met Joshua was recently named an Official Selection at the prestigious Carmarthen Bay Film Festival in the UK, which is a BAFTA qualifying festival.

Chamaraj currently resides in India and recently wrote, directed, and edited a short Spanish web series in LA called Finding Home, which is streaming on Amazon Prime UK and US. As of now, she is working on the set of a four-part anthology series about the lives of four urban Indian girls living in different cities of India. The NYFA alum is also working as a screenwriter for an Indo-American feature film to be shot in mid of 2022.

New York Film Academy is proud of the well-earned success of alum Rajni Mysore Chamaraj and is excited at the prospect of more projects from the NYFA alum as a result of the wonderful achievement of being a Stars Collective participant.

Starlight has a mission to create content that amplifies diverse voices, and a central focus of the program is helping to promote the next generation of aspiring filmmakers and creative storytellers. Starlight guides filmmakers through the development of projects including indie features, documentaries, and animation, helping them balance art and commerce, while encouraging them to form their own styles of storytelling that not only manifest personal creative visions but catch the zeitgeist of the times.

The majority of filmmakers selected to the program are female, and represent a highly diverse mix of nationalities, ethnicities, races, and personal and professional backgrounds. The Stars Collective program integrates global resources in order to spark the production of more films of distinctive styles and genres.

Please note: NYFA does not represent that these are typical or guaranteed career outcomes. The success of our graduates in any chosen professional pathway depends on multiple factors, and the achievements of NYFA alumni are the result of their hard work, perseverance, talent and circumstances.

New York Film Academy (NYFA) had the honor of welcoming executive producer ISAAC BOLDEN as part of The 20/20 Series, created by NYFA’s Creative Director of Filmmaking and Cinematography, Liz Hinlein. The conversation was moderated by Hinlein and was held virtually, allowing individuals to join NYFA and the special guests from all over the world.

The 20/20 Series, created by Hinlein, is a virtual pop-up event that takes us into the homes, hubs, and workspaces of an array of dynamic creative visionaries to allow for relaxed, engaging conversations on craft, creation, and artistic vision.

Isaac Bolden is an executive producer with a distinguished array of work with themes ranging from white-collar crime to high fashion, storm chasing, full (tattooed) sleeves, death row to the friendly skies. Bolden’s 1998 short film, Final Act, Executive Produced by Danny Glover, which tackled the final thoughts of a man on death row, enjoyed a successful run on IFC. In the early 2000s, he began work with Granada New York and helped create/produce what is now cable’s longest-running series, The First 48 (A&E), a follow-doc with police from multiple cities as they attempt to solve local homicides. He produced Emmy-nominated documentaries for A&E’s franchise Investigative Reports with Bill Kurtis: Anatomy of 9/11, Portrait of A Terrorist: The Muhammad Atta Story, Room Raiders (MTV), and Airline (A&E), which granted exclusive access to Southwest Airline’s operations.

By 2013, Bolden began work with Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, bringing his journalistic provocative storytelling style to television, producing: Death Row Stories (CNN); Dirty Money (Netflix), The New Yorker Presents (Amazon), Cooked, and Salt Fat Acid Heat (Netflix), and Hip Hop: The Songs that Shook America (AMC), a six-part series, in partnership with Executive Producers Black Thought and Questlove of The Roots and Shawn Gee.

Right out of the gate, Hinlein posed the question to Bolden about what makes a great documentary, something Bolden is all too familiar with considering the multiple successful documentaries he has produced over the years. “I really think it [a good documentary] is something that is able to touch the heart and soul of the stories.”

Part of his role as an executive producer really boils down to ensuring not only that the story is sound and heartfelt, but that the film or series is ultimately packaged in a way that whoever is distributing it already has a final product to share. “Being an executive producer is really about understanding the budget, protecting the producing team, and ensuring everything that is contracted properly so when you give the product over to the broadcaster you can let them feel that you have done your due diligence and protect them in releasing that product. Essentially, my job is to put together how the show can be made and at what cost and with the right team.”

Sometimes that budget that executive producers like Bolden have to work with comes from assessing the whole project before anything else can be discussed in terms of production. “ I have done it [budgeting for projects] for quite some time and it comes down to understanding what we want to do on that day or location [while shooting] and understanding how long we need to be at a location or time to pull it off or set it up. A lot of folks don’t want to deal with the numbers but that’s something I am very good at and how I stepped into this world.”

While others see impossible, Bolden sees possible when it comes to understanding the numbers that come into play while making any project. “The numbers are equally as creative with what goes in the final film,” he explained. “You get a certain amount of numbers for any film to make it work. Make it beautiful and make it compelling. You are sort of doing a dance every day, so you are constantly keeping track of that and managing that, and that is a creative process because you have to come up with suggestions and alternative methods.”

New York Film Academy would like to thank Isaac Bolden for joining the NYFA global community to discuss assessing budgets for projects and the production process for The 20/20 Series, created by and moderated by Liz Hinlein.

These guests are not faculty and do not teach at NYFA, but they have appeared to share their stories and experience with our students. As guest speakers are scheduled based on their availability, NYFA cannot guarantee whether a guest speaker will visit during a student’s attendance or who that guest speaker may be. This guest speaker forum is not part of any NYFA curriculum and attendance at guest speaker events is purely voluntary. Students should be aware that guest speaker events do not represent a job opportunity nor are they intended to provide industry connections.

New York Film Academy Australia is excited to congratulate alumni Stephen Osborne, Josh Hale, and Luke Speech, who have been selected to screen their films at the 2021 Gold Coast Film Festival (“GCFF”). This year, NYFA Australia is the only film school to have more than one alum featured among the festival’s robust lineup of curated film selections.

An official GCFF selection, Osborne was invited to screen his film Strangeville at this year’s festival and compete in the Best Australian Indie Film category. The sci-fi dramedy centres in on an outback town, plagued with alien abductions, that must battle unknown forces and dismantle a law enforcement cover-up in the process. The dystopic had its world premiere at the Sydney Sci-fiction Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best Feature Film and was hailed by Blunt Magazine as a “well-earned break for your viewing schedule.”

Osborne has previously received recognition for the short film Roommate Wanted For The End of The World, winning Best Short Screenplay at the Rome Prisma Independent Film Awards and Screenwriter of The Month for The Monthly Film Festival. His short film Jane also earned Osborne an award for Best First Time Director at the Oniros Film Awards, which he completed during his studies at New York Film Academy.

In addition to being written and directed by Osborne, Strangeville also includes 21 members of the cast and crew who also attended NYFA’s Gold Coast campus. Among them is Vito Leo who plays Miles in one of the film’s leading roles. Leo has worked most notably on Thor: Ragnorok and the highly-anticipated Godzilla vs. Kong.

Also on the slate for the GCFF is Hale’s House of Inequity, which will appear in the ‘Dark Nights and Fantastic Fans’ portion of the program, alongside screenings of Willy’s Wonderland and The Lord of The Rings trilogy. The film follows a group of friends that experience a day trip gone wrong after investigating an abandoned house where they must figure out how to survive the night.

The NYFA Australia alum is known for his critically acclaimed film Digital Athlete: The Road Set League, which earned Hale an IndieFEST Film Award of Merit, a Festival Award at the Festigious International Film Festival, and a Best of the Year Award nomination at the Gold Movie Awards. The producer-director is also in production on the documentary Do or Die and is currently in the development of the thriller Force of Evil.

Hale’s House of Inequity was originally supposed to have its world premiere at the 2020 GCFF but was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film credits 17 NYFA Australia alumni among the film’s cast and crew and features the work of NYFA Australia faculty members Stuart Lumsden (NYFA Australia Deputy Chair of Acting for Film), sound design instructor Vic Kaspar (House of Flying Daggers, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban), and Patrick Ryan (NYFA Australia Associate Chair of Short-Term Filmmaking).

“I am so proud of what we achieved,” shares Hale. “A local cast and crew utilising the incredible Gold Coast and its glorious production value. I am proud of this film.”

Also screening at GCFF is Speech’s Paint. The NYFA Australia alum’s film will screen as part of the EMERGE! showcase of short films that celebrates the best and brightest film talent from Queensland’s next generation of filmmakers.

NYFA Australia is proud of Filmmaking alumni Stephen Osborne, Josh Hale, and Luke Speech , as well as the incredibly talented group of NYFA Australia alumni and faculty who served as the cast and crew for Strangeville and House of Inequity.

House of Inequity’s second screening and the Emerge! short film showcase (where Paint will be screened) still have tickets available. To book your tickets, click the links below:

• Tickets for House of Inequity
  • Tuesday, 20 April at 6:30 p.m. AEST – SOLD OUT
  • Tuesday, 20 April at 7:00 p.m. AEST
• Tickets for Paint – This film will be part of EMERGE! short film showcase
  • Wednesday, 21 April at 5:00 p.m. AEST
• Tickets for Strangeville
  • Sunday, 18 April at 7:30 p.m. AEST – SOLD OUT

Please note: NYFA does not represent that these are typical or guaranteed career outcomes. The success of our graduates in any chosen professional pathway depends on multiple factors, and the achievements of NYFA alumni are the result of their hard work, perseverance, talent and circumstances.