Crafting Your Web or Digital Series (Jul 2020)

Anna Kerrigan is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker with a background in independent film, digital storytelling and theater. COWBOYS, which she wrote and directed, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2020 where it won Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for Steve Zahn. Her short film HOT SEAT premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, played at many others and was a Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere. She also directed THE CHANCES, a digital series written by and starring two deaf actors, which also premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, was awarded the Audience Award for Best Narrative at Outfest and was later optioned to be a TV show on Sundance Now. Her Gotham-nominated digital series THE IMPOSSIBILITIES (2015) was licensed by Studio Plus (Canal) for international distribution and was a Vimeo Staff Pick. She has written and directed short films for Funny Or Die, Amazon and Refinery 29 and is a Film Independent and Sundance Fellow. Kerrigan graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Drama, then lived and worked in New York City in film and theater before coming to Los Angeles. She is represented by UTA and Mosaic. 

Yoko Okumura is a genre-fluid writer, director, and performer. Born in a Buddhist temple in Japan and raised in the frostbite of Minneapolis, Yoko now lives and works in Los Angeles. She is obsessed with telling rebellious stories through underrepresented perspectives and thrives in the intersection of grit and glamour. Yoko loves to bring these original visions to life as a writer/director but also gains tremendous joy helping to bring the creative vision of showrunners and writers to life. Yoko Okumura most recently directed and co-storied the “Ball of Twine” episodes of the Sam Raimi horror anthology 50 STATES OF FRIGHT on Quibi, starring Ming-Na Wen (AGENTS OF SHIELD) and Karen Allen (RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK). She is attached to several feature film projects as a director while stepping into episodic directing as well. Her short, KIMI KABUKI, received a DGA Student Film Award, the Panavision New Filmmakers Award, and an Austin Film Festival Jury Award. Her directing clients have included Lifetime/A&E's scripted digital series FALL INTO ME, Super Deluxe’s TURNT BEAUTY series and Uproxxx UNCHARTED series. Branded clients have included Cover Girl, Honda and Instagram. She is an alum of the Ryan Murphy Half Initiative, The Fox Directing Program, and WIF/Sundance Financing Intensive. She also shadowed showrunner/director Peter Paige on the Freeform series GOOD TROUBLE. Yoko graduated from the Calarts Film/Video program and the AFI Directing Program. Outside of filmmaking, Yoko loves fire dancing and aerial arts.

Lizzie Rose is a Canadian-American screenwriter and director, working in both narrative and documentary filmmaking. Her short film THE LAW OF AVERAGES premiered at Clermont-Ferrand, played at Palm Springs, and won the Jury Prize at both Tallin Black Nights and the Provincetown International Film Festival. As a producer, Lizzie's short films have played internationally at festivals like TIFF and Telluride, won the student BAFTA, the Icelandic Academy Awards (the Edda) and sold to CANAL+ and HBO. She is the co-writer of a feature film, THE MALL, with Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment (I, TONYA) and Emily Ziff Griffin (JACK GOES BOATING, CAPOTE) and Nikola Duravcevic producing. Lizzie was the Writer’s Assistant on RUSSIAN DOLL Season 2 (Netflix). Interview Magazine featured her as a writer/director to watch in 2017 and she is writing and developing multiple feature projects.

Lizzie has a BA (English Literature) from Harvard, where she studied documentary filmmaking as a part of the Sensory Ethnography Lab. She received an MFA in Screenwriting from Columbia University in 2017. At Columbia, she led the Columbia Women in Film advocacy group, taught an undergraduate seminar in documentary filmmaking, and received the inaugural Alex Sichel Fellowship for a promising female filmmaker with “bold vision, acute intelligence and overall curiosity and vitality”.