Directing: Prepping Your First Feature (Level 2) (Dec. 2019)

Eric Eason is an award-winning writer-director who has worked in the film industry for over 20 years on various projects in the US, Brazil and Argentina—from independent films to $150 million dollar studio projects.

His first feature, Manito, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. His second feature, Journey to the End of the Night, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and starred Brendan Fraser, Scott Glenn and Yaslin Bey. As a screenwriter, Eason has worked on dozens of films in and outside of the studio system and he wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated A Better Life, directed by Chris Weitz.

Lise Raven is a US/EU filmmaker. Her debut feature Low, set in the gritty world of the Brooklyn boxing scene, was screened internationally.

In 2000 Raven was awarded the prestigious DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm Artist Residency in Filmmaking and moved to Berlin where she also received a NIPKOW Fellowship. In 2003, she was selected for the Berlinale Talents. In 2004 Raven's feature film project, SNIPE was chosen for the Moonstone Directing Lab, and received development funding from the Irish Film Board. Raven's 2007 film, STRIDE, told the story of a female combat soldier returning home to her tight-knit Philadelphia neighborhood.  

In 2014 Raven wrote, produced and directed the award-winning feature KINDERWALD, and in the summer of 2018, Raven wrote, produced and directed her newest feature film, SNAELAND, which was filmed in Iceland and Berlin. SNAELAND premiered in the summer of 2019 and is currently on the international festival circuit.  Raven is a member of EWA, Primetime and Film Fatales.  Lise Raven’s creative think tank is Noveltine /projects.

A graduate of New York University’s film school, Todd held a wide variety of jobs from working for Academy Award winning writer and director Robert Benton (BONNIE & CLYDE, PLACES IN THE HEART, KRAMER VS. KRAMER) to interning on Saturday Night Live’s film unit, before landing a lead acting role on James L. Brooks’ short-lived television series, PHENOM, which brought him to Los Angeles.

Todd’s third directorial feature, HELLO I MUST BE GOING was in competition and selected as the Opening Night Film at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The film, released by Oscilloscope, was named one of the Top Ten Independent films of that year by the National Board of Review and also garnered a Best Screenplay award for screenwriter Sarah Koskoff at the Nantucket Film Festival.

This past year he and Koskoff teamed up again on her independent pilot called, THE SUMMER PEOPLE - centered on the prestigious (yet fictitious) Effing Massachusetts Summer Theatre Festival that has been forced to take on corporate sponsorship from Amazon, throwing its high-minded actors and directors into a tailspin.

Other directing and writing credits include: the Cannes Film Festival competition film, MACBETH starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, Sundance Grand Jury nominee and Waldo Salt Best Screenplay Award winning film LOVE, LIZA (Sony Classics) with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kathy Bates, THE MARC PEASE EXPERIENCE (Paramount Vantage) with Jason Schwartzman, Anna Kendrick and Ben Stiller and his short film adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s THE FIFTEEN MINUTE HAMLET starring Austin Pendleton, which screened at Sundance and won Best Short at The New York Comedy Film Festival. He is a recipient of an Annenberg Grant, as well as being a Sundance Fellow and Advisor. 

As an actor, he has appeared in many films and television series including SCENT OF A WOMAN, JERRY MAGUIRE and HIGH FIDELITY.