Michael Patten
Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Michael's fascination with cinema began at the tender age of five. It was then that he determined, quite adamantly, that he would become a filmmaker. Before his teens, Michael had already made several films. By the end of high school, his works had appeared in the Mill Valley Film Festival and the Stag Theater at Skywalker Sound.
Now a senior at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Michael's sensibilities have sharpened. His work at NYU has won praise and acclaim; one project won the Tony Hawkins Award and was selected to be shown as an example to be screened for incoming freshmen. Through NYU's Dublin program, Michael wrote a feature-length script with guidance from professional Irish filmmakers, and last spring he embarked on creating an ambitious short film named Desert Hopes [follow the hyperlink to view the new trailer]. His New York professional experience includes internships with Likely Story, an independent production company, and indie film distributor Palisades/Tartan. Michael has left this winter for the United Arab Emirates, where he was invited by award-winning filmmaker Caveh Zahedi to crew on a documentary for the Sharjah Art Foundation's 2011 Biennial.
Click here to view Michael's reel of past work.
Will Ellis
Specializing in cinematography at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Will has acted as director of photography for many of his peers' student and extracurricular projects, and his work has been shown around the world at festivals in New York, Istanbul, and the Bahamas. Also a filmmaker in his own right, having recently screened his award-winning documentary short Hair in Toronto and Orange County, he has built up a multitude of production experience outside of NYU while working on R&B music videos, a reality series for HGTV, and on-site reporting for BBC World News. He is currently employed as an educator at the Children's Museum of the Arts, where he runs regular stop-motion animation workshops and assists in public school outreach programs. He also works as a freelance videographer and editor and is an avid visual artist.
Rachael Fung
Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Rachael is a student in New York University's Film and Television program, where she is a Tisch Scholar, Film and TV Student Representative and sits on the Tisch Discipline Committee. She has also been on the Dean's List while pursuing minors in both Producing and Business of Entertainment, Media and Technology. Since her freshman year, Rachael has participated in over 50 productions and produced over 20 films, documentaries and music videos in 16mm, 35mm and digital formats, several of which have been screened in showcases and festivals. Her own documentary Eat, Breathe, Sleep, Jump was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2010 Fusion Film Festival. Currently working at Red Crown Productions, Rachael has also held internships at independent production company Gigantic Pictures in New York, sales company Arclight Films in Sydney, and Window Productions, Australasia's most internationally and locally awarded commercial film company.
Armann Ortega
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Armann began his film career by participating in the Duke City Shoot Out Festival for two years. Currently, he is matriculating at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts as a fourth year Film and Television Major and Art History Minor with a concentration in production design.
In 2009, Armann worked on the Happy Madison short ÒPublic AccessÓ in the Art Department, and continues to collaborate on several NYU student films as production designer. Last spring, Armann production designed Desert Hopes and helped bring the film to life.
Ryan King
Reared in the luscious flatlands of southern Ohio, Ryan developed a love for film sound during his freshman year at NYU, and has gone on to actively pursue its various elements. Having mixed several intermediate and advanced projects at NYU, he also interned at Silver Sound over the past summer. Currently enrolled in Advanced Production Sound and Sound Mix Workshop, Ryan's interests include multitrack recorders, black coffee, and Seal's Kiss from a Rose.
Ben Spaner
Ben Spaner is interested in writing and cinematography. He is a junior at the Film and Television program at NYU. He is currently working on his feature, an historical fiction (although hasn't yet come to grasp the meaning of that term). He likes making soup and raising chickens.
Carlos Valdivia
Carlos Valdivia is a sophomore at Tisch School of the Arts, majoring in film and television with a minor in social and cultural analysis. He recently produced and casted The Fragment, winner of Best Film and the Audience Award at the 2011 Tisch 48 Film Festival. As a high school student, Carlos also studied film at California State University, Dominguez Hills and at NYU's Summer Filmmaker's Workshop. His final film project at the Summer Filmmakers Workshop was awarded the Gold Key from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for Los Angeles. Since coming to NYU, he has worked on over 20 student film projects.
He has also interned at the Levantine Cultural Center and NBC Universal in Los Angeles, where he helped make selections for Rob Zombie's Halloween Horror Nights Short Film Contest.
Maggie Gilbride
Maggie Gilbride, originally from Buffalo New York, is a sophomore in the Film and Television department at New York University. Now at NYU she is working towards two minors in Producing, and Entertainment Business in addition to her Film and Television major. Maggie has produced over 7 films while at NYU thus far, and is the secretary of the Student Producers Association. In addition to her involvement within the NYU Film community she has also interned with City Stage Sound Stages and has since become an employee. She has interned at PBS and will be interning at Universal Studios in Los Angeles over the summer for Marc Platt Productions.
Austin Plocher
Fascinated by the acoustic realm, Austin Plocher has worked in sound for the majority of his still blooming career. Entering Emerson College with the aspiration to record music, his focus soon shifted to audio post production. Since then, he has worked on the short films of his peers, pursued his own creative endeavors, and diligently managed the workload of an average media-based student, doing everything from boom operating to audio dialogue replacement. His ultimate pleasure comes in the boundless and imaginative zone of sound design.
Having also formed an on-campus organization, Emerson Experimental Arts, his interests lie not only within the moving picture, but also into areas of installation, sound art, and performance – all of which inevitably find their way into his post production. A recent graduate from Emerson College, Austin spent his final Fall semester working on his BFA project, meticulously constructing the sound design for the short film Desert Hopes.
Darian Lanzetta
Darian Lanzetta is a Tisch Undergraduate pursuing a major in Film/TV with a double minor in Producing and Business of Entertainment Media and Technology. In 2010, she worked as a production assistant on Derek Simon's film A Very Tight Place and currently interns for the Producers Guild of America at their east office in Soho. Darian won first prize at the 2009 National Student Television Network Convention in Orlando, FL for her film Fragmentation of Charlie Snow in a sixteen hour film competition. She also won the Wellesley Book award for Language Arts in writing in 2009. Darian is involved with a number of NYU Tisch organizations, and in addition to being the marketing director for Fusion Film Festival, she is also a part of the Stern-Tisch Entertainment Business Association, and a member of the Student Producers Association.
Sebastian Savino
Sebastian Savino is currently a freshman at Tisch School of the Arts, majoring in film and television with a double minor in Producing and Business of Entertainment, Media, and Technology. He has studied documentary filmmaking at the Jacob Burns Film Center and also attended the NYU Tisch Summer High School Program for filmmaking prior to his senior year of high school. During his first semester at NYU, Sebastian has held several roles on advanced projects and has also completed two of his own short films in his Frame and Sequence class. Sebastian is very happy to be on board this project and is excited to do what he can to help it come together on screen.