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Upcoming Events
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Coming soon...
Short Film Night
Surviving L.A.
Pilot Panel
Halloween Mixer
Peer Groups
Holiday Party
and more!
Watch your email
for more details...
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Greetings NUEA Members!
  Soon, the trees along Sheridan Road will burst into brilliant colors as the weather turns chilly. Meanwhile, Los Angeles has sunshine and warm weather for another few weeks. Still, LA and Evanston have something in common - they're both full of talented, dedicated Northwestern Wildcats!
The NUEA has big plans for the coming season, including panels, screenings, peer groups, and of
course, cocktails! We
appreciate your feedback, so feel free to email us at info@nueawest.org. If you have ideas or skills you want to contribute,
we encourage you to join the executive board. Working with the board puts you at the center of a wide and vibrant network of entertainment professionals. Plus, free food! We meet once a month for breakfast in Hollywood.
Hope to see you at our next meeting!
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Summer In Review
A Look Back At The Season's NUEA Events
Short Film Nights (6/14 and 8/23)
Several alumni got the chance to show off their hard work at our two  Short Film Nights, both held at M Bar in
Hollywood. The evenings included a buffet dinner and a Q&A featuring the filmmakers, actors, and writers. Thanks to producers Allie Adair and Julie Alexander for keeping the Short Film Night program going strong!
Our next Short Film Night will be held on Thursday November 29th. If you are involved in a short film or webisode, we want to hear from you! Send an email to info@nueawest.org and include your film's title, logline, and your role. We may screen your film at our next event!
Sunset Social Mixer w/Univ. Michigan, Yale & Montana U. (7/18)
The Hotel Angelino played host to a lovely cocktail mixer, co-hosted by the NUEA and several other alumni associations. The hotel's top-floor bar, named one of the hottest new restaurants by Conde Nast Traveler Magazine, offered guests a 360-degree view and a beautiful panorama of the sun setting beyond the Santa Monica Mountains. How classy!
Independent TV Festival (7/27)
Founded
by NU alum A.J. Tesler, the second annual Independent Television
Festival ran from July 27 - 29.  It featured twenty-five independently-produced
TV pilots, presented in a film-festival-style atmosphere. NUEA Members received a special discount on tickets and an invitation to the
kickoff party at Raleigh Studios. By all accounts, the event was a
great success, and it provided some well-deserved exposure for
independent TV shows.
Comedy Writers' Story Break Group (8/5)
The NUEA Comedy Writers' Room (hosted in conjunction with Columbia College Alumni Network) is a story-break group for half-hour TV comedy that mimics the "writer's room" process of outlining. Members bring in several story ideas, and the group chooses an "A story" (and possibly "B" and "C") and breaks it out into a workable outline. We then discuss and collaborate until the originator of the idea has an outline ready to be fleshed out into a first draft.
Our
first meeting had 12 members in attendance.
We developed stories for "The Office" and an original pilot. Since then, we've had two more meetings. Our next group meeting is Sunday, October 7th. To participate, writers must have a thorough
understanding of half-hour script structure and are asked to submit a half-hour
writing sample. Members pitching a
pilot are asked to bring handouts with a logline, synopsis, and character
breakdowns. The group meets every three
weeks on Sunday afternoons. Interested?
Email Scott Wheeler at scottwheels@mac.com.
"Purple Goes Green" Beach Clean-Up & Wine Tasting (8/18) 
On
August 18th, volunteers from the NUEA West and the NU Club
of LA met at Zuma Beach in Malibu and set
out with gloves, bags, and note cards to clean up the beach with
grassroots groups Surfrider and Heal The Bay. Styrofoam pieces,
plastic utensils, straws, and cigarette
butts littered the beach -- all things that could have ended up in the
ocean, or in the stomachs of birds, fish, and other wildlife.
After
the beach clean-up, we finished off the event with a wonderful wine
tasting at the Rosenthal Tasting Room, where the sale of Surfrider Wine
supports the Surfrider Foundation. The volunteers had great time and
really made a difference. Special thanks to NUEA Board member Flip Laffoon and NU alumni Kirsten James of Heal the Bay and Bill Ross of the Wyland Foundation for their support. Look for our upcoming Habitat for Humanity event in October!
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Submit Your Member News!
Get Your 15 Kilobytes of Fame In Our Email Updates
If you are an NUEA member and have news you'd like to include in our next
Member News e-mail, or information to include in the next NUEA
Newsletter, please e-mail NEWSLETTER@NUEAWEST.ORG.
News can include: plays · stand-up shows · television or film appearances · awards · nominations · screenings · job opportunities · special events
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Entertainment Resources on the Web
Reviewing Online Assets for Entertainment Professionals
The
Internet is really, really big. Hundreds of new sites are created in
the blink of an eye. Thousands of songs and videos are uploaded and
viewed daily. The Web has exploded into the world's largest media
channel, and for those of us in entertainment, the sheer quantity of
information can be overwhelming. Not only that, but the level of
competition has expanded exponentially.
Luckily, there
are resources to help you make the most of the opportunities that this
new medium presents. A few of our recommended sites
include: - iactor.com:
an online casting directory, free to all SAG members. This
new-but-growing service allows actors to create personal profiles with
headshots, resumes, and video and audio clips. Casting directors can
search a database of SAG actors by gender, physical characteristics,
skills, talents, credits. Several similar sites exist, but only iactor
provides access to registered Screen Actors Guild members.
- donedealpro.com:
tracks the sale and optioning of thousands of scripts, books, and
pitches in Hollywood. Useful for tracking trends in what's selling, as
well as keeping up on industry news. Though the site charges a
subscription fee to access its database, it can be well worth $25 a
year if you're a writer seeking insight into the script market or
advice from seasoned pros.
- tvtracker.com:
a subscription to this site gives you the ability to track a television
project as soon as the concept is bought by a
network or syndication company, and then follow the project through
script delivery, pilot production, series order, and beyond. A great
resource for watching the progress of a project, well before the trades
report on it - and much more in-depth. Plus, their Credits database
lists virtually every writer, producer, director and actor working in
TV, and it includes agent and manager contact information.
- funnyordie.com:
a popular comedy site that features exclusive video content from
amateurs, aspiring comedians, and established stars. The site lets its
audience act as a quality filter, as each video concludes with an
option to rate the clip as "funny" or "die". Created by Gary Sanchez
Productions (Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's company), funnyordie.com
offers anyone with a camera and a computer the chance to have their
video shoot to the front page.
- defamer.com:
industry gossip with biting humor and up-to-the-minute information.
This blog is the go-to source for industry chatter, breaking news
updates, and true stories from the bowels of the major entertainment
companies. And because it's updated over twenty times a day, Defamer
often gets the scoop on Hollywood news as it unfolds.
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Member Spotlight: AJ Tesler
Actor, Writer, Founder of Independent TV Fest
 Let's get the basics out of the way. When did you graduate NU, and what have you been up to since then?
I graduated class of 2000 with a major in Theater. I was the technical
director for Waa-Mu all four years, which probably impacted
my career as a producer. Right out of college, I started a production
company in Chicago called Goldingeye - my first attempt at
web-based entertainment. Then, I moved to New York to be a New Media Analyst for D2
Capital, a hedge fund that invests in technology. I'd comb the Internet looking for online
entertainment companies to fund. I also developed
web pages for actors and musicians and did stand-up comedy on the side.
I started getting acting jobs once I moved to LA, but production was really my passion. At one point, I realized how many talented writers I
knew who just couldn't get their pilots picked up by studios. Their scripts were good - they just weren't given a chance. So a few folks and
I decided to create a showcase for independent TV shows. That became the Independent Television Festival, which was
recently held for the second time. We had over 300 submissions, and
close to 7,000 people attended the week-long event.
It sounds like you've seen the
entertainment industry from many angles. What key lessons have you
learned from those diverse experiences?
The most
important thing I've learned is that each job I take teaches me
something about myself, and that knowledge can be used in my
current position. A lot
of people get really entrenched in their little corner of the field, and while they're good at their specialty, they don't develop a broad set of skills.
My advice is to try everything you can, and attempt to understand all
aspects of it. This will open up many more opportunities for you.
Throughout your career, you've shown a great interest in production. What is it about production that you enjoy most?
Control. It's something many Northwestern students have a taste for...control of our work's outcome, and of our own
destiny. I like feeling like my work shapes the project as a whole,
and I'm not just contributing to one specific aspect. Plus, it's the
best way I've found to put my wide range of skills to use and expand my influence. Production work has taught me how to do
web and graphic design, editing, sound effects, even directing. It's
given my whole career more variety.
How did your Northwestern experience impact your career in entertainment?
At NU, I learned how to work. Freshman year, I realized I was
surrounded by tons of other highly-motivated overachievers, and the
competition forced me to work hard. "Good enough"
wasn't good enough...I had to put forth my best effort in order to have
a shot at success. The NU environment challenged me, but it also gave
me opportunities to try my hand at everything, from directing to acting
to production. I learned a lot in class, but my non-academic education
came from my
peers in the classes of '99, 2000, and 2001 who taught me how to work
hard. They were both my collaborators and my competition. And
whether or not we were friends in college, my connection to those
people is a valuable asset to my career now.
You've followed the rise of the
Internet's influence on entertainment very closely. How do you see the
web impacting the industry in the near future, and what will that mean
for people who are new to the business?
I think there's a similarity between the Internet's relationship to
television and cable TV's relationship to networks. The newer medium
was initially feared as a replacement for the older one, but they
ended up complementing each other. The Internet is beginning to integrate with
television while at the same time establishing itself as a new outlet.
TV shows stream on websites and webisodes are growing in
popularity, but there's also incredible potential for original,
independent content.
The web in general is in a
period of innovation right now. Just like the first Internet boom in
the 1990s, lots of new websites are cropping up trying to make use of video and online entertainment. The herd will thin out as fewer
and fewer sites are able to monetize the attention they receive. Eventually we'll wind up with a smaller number of more
established online entertainment outlets.
For newcomers, the best approach is to embrace new media completely and
become familiar and comfortable with it, because it's the future of
this industry. Especially for young writers and producers: if you're
not creating online content, you're not chasing the real prize.
Scripts and screenplays are important, but web video is in high demand
and it's relatively cheap and easy to produce.
You founded the Independent Television Festival over two years ago.
What are some of the challenges you've encountered in starting your own
organization?
The festival started out like any production: a group of
people with a common goal sat down in a room and asked ,
"what do we need and how do we get it?" We started by putting a plan
together and reaching out through our personal networks. Everybody
knew somebody who knew somebody who became a resource, and within five
months we had the main components in place -- an executive board,
sponsors, and submissions. After that, it was a matter of filling in
the details. But there are lots of pitfalls, and it's
good to have a team of capable people working with you.
I'm really proud of the festival. We had great
attendance and hundreds of submissions, and we were able to
provide a showcase for 25 independent TV pilots. Several people associated with last year's festival have since gotten
breaks. One show was picked up by a network, and a few writers and
directors received wider attention and offers for
representation. The fest is doing was it was intended to do -- propel
talented people into better career positions.
What pearls of wisdom can you offer new graduates and young alumni just starting a career in entertainment?
Don't get discouraged by your first project. Hardly anybody starts
off with something really great. You just have to accept that it's
crap and resolve to make something better next time. Also, like I said
before, try everything, and do it as well as you can. Hollywood is
extremely competitive, so you've got to put up the best you have to
offer. If you're given an opportunity, you've got to big or don't
bother going at all. Like my old acting teacher Mary Poole said, "If
you're going to fail, fail miserably."
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Are you interested in getting involved with the NUEA? We currently
have several opportunities to participate in the executive board. Email president@nueawest.org and one of the Co-Presidents will
contact you.
See you next newsletter!
www.nueawest.org |
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