teaching
Currently Affliated Faculty at Emerson College, teaching screenwriting, filmmaking, and cinematography. I am also a graduate of Emerson's MFA Program in Writing for Film & Television. I have taught at the Maine Media Workshops, MassArt, and BU's Center for Digital Imaging Arts. I hold both USA & EU passports.
Philosophy
I believe in a positive, inclusive learning environment. I seek to foster development of a self-aware creative process that places craft in the service of creative intentions. Students learn to think of process and craft as reliable means to achieve creative freedom, not as a set of rigid rules or formulae. I also firmly believe that competition should be reserved for the marketplace, and classtime should be a safe place for mutual support in reaching creative goals.
Cinematic Storytelling
The successful filmmakers we all admire understand how coverage choices influence the audience – providing contextual support for the storytelling. This is a new way to understand this process, putting it into a total framework, so that you don't need to build it up cinematic thinking through years of trial-and-error.
Link to the book.
Screenwriting
Developing writers are usually unbalanced – they may be fully connected to characters but not structure, or vice versa. My teaching focuses on what is strong, then works to build the connections that bring plot, character, and theme into a cohensive and mutually supportive whole. We use a variety of structural paradigms, to learn how each works as an assessment tool.
Cinematography
Digital cinema and film can be taught through a common approach. Camera, lenses, and lighting are all part of visual system that can be fully supportive of storytelling. We work through the isolation of technical variables, in order to fully understand how each element of the total system contributes to audience response.
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Teaching remotely during pandemic
Pioneering use of live teaching with Set-a-light 3D lighting simulation software for narrative cinematography.
