COHORT REHASH: LAB SURVEYS & REWRITES w/ AC Cole
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Cohort to fill out Lab Surveys and final questions before rewrite week!
MENTOR ROUND TABLE (moderated by Team)
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Heidi Eklund (Casting Dir), Geri Cole (Writer), Kiran Chitanvis (Writer/Dir), Billy Mernit (Former SONY Exec/UCLA Screenwriting Teacher)
TABLE READS w/ MENTOR NOTES
2:00 PM - 3:30PM
Table Reads/Notes from Mentors (3-4 short scripts a day)
AC's FINAL CHECK UP ON REWRITE OUTLINES
3:30PM - 4:30PM
Win or lose, does your script meet all the requirements for a successful contained short? Can you shoot it yourself? We'll read the Cohort's new outlines out loud, with notes from team and cohort. Cohort will have one week from Lab Close to submit final drafts to compete for the $10K production grant.
CLOSING PARTY
4:30PM - 5:30PM
Open to all Lab Members/Mentors!
HEIDI EKLUND
Casting Director
Heidi Eklund, an actor by trade, served as casting director alongside Amy Hutchings in Upstate productions of film and commercials, eventually creating her own company, Hudson Valley Casting. Credits are too many to include, but some are: The Storied Life, As Sick As They Made Us, by Mayim Bialik with Dustin Hoffman, The Hating Game, by Peter Hutchings starring Lucy Hale, A Deadly Legend, by Eric Wolf starring Judd Hirsh, Corbin Bernsen, Lori Petty, Paint, byBritt McAdams starring Owen Wilson, Linoleum by Colin West starring Jim Gaffigan and Rhea Seahorn, Shoplifters of the World, SKIN directed by Guy Nattive starring Jamie Bell, Then Came You by Peter Hutchings with Maisie Williams and Asa Butterfield. Furlough with Melissa Leo and Whoopi Goldberg, Fabled with Zosia Mamet, BURN: The Bitch The Thief, The Psycho with Josh Hutchinson and Suki Waterhouse.
GERI COLE
Writer
Geri Cole is an award winning screenwriter, interactive writer, performer, and producer based in New York. She is currently the co-chair of both the Writers Guild of America East’s Committee for Equity and Inclusion and the Black Writers Salon. Her work has to date earned her five Daytime Emmys, a Writers Guild Award, a Producers Guild award, and an NAACP image award for writing work. You can also find Geri buying yet another vintage leather jacket (it's a problem), talking you into oyster happy hour, or stopping to pet a dog.
KIRAN CHITANVIS
Writer/Director
Kiran Chitanvis (WGAE Women’s Salon) is an award winning producer and writer/director working across documentary and fiction for feature film, TV, and digital spaces. She has worked on projects currently available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, VICE, and YouTube and served as a supervising producer for teams at global media companies like Gizmodo Media and Business Insider. She received her MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and BA from Princeton University. Kiran is a member of the WGAE, based between LA and NYC.
BILLY MERNIT
Former SONY Exec/UCLA Screenwriting Teacher
A story analyst at Universal Pictures for nearly 30 years, BILLY MERNIT has worked on such movies as Bridesmaids and Wicked. In screenwriting circles, he’s known as "the guru of rom-com" for his best-selling textbook, Writing the Romantic Comedy, and taught writing at UCLA Extension for decades. During some 50 years in the entertainment industry he’s written for television (NBC’s Santa Barbara), had his first novel published by Random House, and written songs recorded by Carly Simon and Judy Collins, among others.