Advisor Studio: Trey Ellis (THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN) on Building Your Storytelling Toolbox
About this Advisor Studio
In Advisor Studio sessions, Sundance Collab Advisors share field experiences and insights into their specific areas of craft, including writing, directing and producing for TV and film.
In this intimate conversation with award-winning filmmaker and professor of screenwriting at Columbia University, Trey Ellis (THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN, GOOD FENCES), Ellis guides filmmakers through how to build a storytelling toolbox. Your storytelling toolbox is a resource for techniques and strategies that will inspire your screenwriting process and strengthen your stories. Ellis shares effective practices for adapting material and his thoughts on channeling your emotions into your work.
Advisor StudioTeam
Trey Ellis
Advisor
Trey Ellis is an Emmy and Peabody winning filmmaker, American Book Award Winning novelist, playwright, essayist and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Most recently, he is an Executive Producer of the HBO documentary TRUE JUSTICE: BRYAN STEVENSON'S FIGHT FOR EQUALITY and last year’s KING IN THE WILDERNESS also for HBO.
He has written dozens of scripts and teleplays including the TUSKEGEE AIRMEN for HBO, and GOOD FENCES for Showtime, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the PEN award for Best Teleplay of the year. His works have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the author of the novels, PLATITUDES, HOME REPAIRS and the American Book Award Winning, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, as well as the memoir BEDTIME STORIES: ADVENTURES IN THE LAND OF SINGLE-FATHERHOOD. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Playboy, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, GQ, Vanity Fair and NewYorker.com and he has contributed audio commentary to NPR’s All Things Considered. His play, FLY, was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Institute and continues to be performed around the country including in Washington, D.C.’s Ford’s Theater, the Pasadena Playhouse and the New Victory Theater in New York.