Who: Noto’s short films have screened and been nominated at numerous festivals, including Sitges International Film Festival and Fantasia International Film Festival. Noto also won two Best Short Film awards and the Audience Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival. He has written several original screenplays and recently completed his directorial debut title, Beyond the Night.
Biggest Lesson Learned: “The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that screenwriting as a profession is for gamblers. At no point in a screenwriter’s career is anything guaranteed. You have to keep your foot on the gas and your hands in the dirt if you want to build a lasting career.”
Jason Noto
Who: Akash Sherman is an award-winning Canadian writer and director with a strong background in visual effects. His most recent feature film Clara premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. It won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature Film at the Austin Film Festival, and has since found U.S. distribution with Screen Media.
Career Turning Point: “A recent turning point in my career began with premiering Clara at TIFF and going on the international festival tour. This allowed me to interact with exciting members of the industry outside of my own country, and resulted in me going to L.A. and having several opportunities open up that a young Indian kid from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada would not usually have.”
Akash Sherman
Who: Greg Sisco is a writer-director in the horror, thriller, and dark comedy genres. His feature spec script The Patience of Vultures won the Horror Award at the Austin Film Festival in 2018 and placed in the Top 50 in the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting.
Hardest Scene to Write: “Each one is a different challenge. I’ve done mockumentary and found footage writing where you have to justify the existence of every shot and have a compelling reason for why it was filmed. I’ve done a project where the same story is shown from multiple perspectives, where you have to find ways to keep from being boring when the same scene has to play out two or three times. Each project is its own Rubik’s Cube and the solution is always different, but solving those puzzles is a big part of what’s enjoyable to me about writing.“
Greg Sisco
Who: Bradley Slabe is an Annie Award-nominated writer and director. His latest short film “Lost & Found” was shortlisted for the 91st Academy Awards and received an Australian Academy Award.
Career Turning Point: “Receiving funding to make “Lost & Found” for sure! I was at a stage of my writing career where I had knocked on too many closed doors and was beginning to lose hope. I mean, I was looking into how to become a Marine Biologist. I’m afraid that’s not a joke.”
Bradley Slabe
Who: Sam Suksiri is a freelance comedy writer from the San Francisco Bay Area, who contributed comedy writing to places like McSweeney’s, Points in Case, and Slackjaw.
Biggest Lesson Learned: “Compliment people’s work. Even if it’s for a small thing, reach out and compliment someone’s work. Don’t do it to butter the other person up or in hopes of getting something from them. Do it for something that person made you enjoy. If you’re doing it right, you should feel a tad awkward reaching out to genuinely compliment someone’s work.”
Sam Suksiri
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