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College of the Arts

SUMMER INTENSIVE FILMMAKING WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS

Beth Baur (Acting and Directing)
Beth Baur is co- director and founder of New Jersey School of Dramatic Arts in association with 12 Miles West Theater Co. and 4th Wall Musical Theater Co. Previously she was senior acting teacher and the Chairman of the Children and Teens Acting Division for ATC. Beth has been a professional actor for over 20 years and has worked with such luminaries as Tommy Tune, George Burns and Lanford Wilson. She has performed in national tours, Off-Broadway, regional theatre and has done over 200 network commercials and corporate industrial films, as well as voice-overs and print. She founded a Theatre for Young Audience's company called "The Make-Believables" and created the children's touring company "The Great Pretenders". She is also a theater critic and instructor at the annual Morris County Teen Arts Festival as well as acting instructor for the University Program at Cranford High School. Beth is a graduate of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University.


Mary Billyou (Camera, Lighting, and Sound)
Mary Billyou is a filmmaker and a cinematographer. For the past eight years, she has worked professionally in the motion picture camera department of many commercials, features, and independent shorts. The work she has shot has shown at Sundance, Rotterdam Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and at the CAA Conference. Some of her early videos are available on Miranda July's "Joanie 4 Jackie" compilations. A studio graduate of The Whitney Independent Study Program, she graduated from the Film, Video, and New Media Department of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's MFA program. Recently, she returned from a video and performance tour of East Coast artist-run spaces with her friend Sabine Gruffat, as one part of The Free Translators.


Bill Jennings (Digital Filmmaking)
Bill Jennings feature film Harlem Aria (2000) is the winner of The Chicago International Film Festival Audience Favorite Award, The Urbanworld Film Festival Audience Award, The Pan African Film Festival Audience Award and a special commendation from the Maryland Film Festival. It was the Centerpiece Selection of the National Black Arts Festival, an official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival and the Munich International Film Festival among others.

As a member of the Director's Guild of America, Bill worked as an Assistant Director on major studio films such as Clean Slate, Airheads, Beverly Hills Cop III, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, New Jack City, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Storyville, and Boomerang. He also worked as an Assistant Director on the television series Saturday Night Live, The Cosby Mysteries, Central Park West, New York Undercover, Prince Street and Dellaventura.

His original screenplay Welcome to Mayfield is in development with Larger Than Life Productions, which produced Seabiscuit, Dave and Big among others. Mr. Jennings is teaching at Montclair State University and has been essential to programming at this University.


Tony Pemberton (Digital Filmmaking, Acting and Directing)
Daily Variety cited Tony Pemberton as One of Ten Directors to Watch when his first feature film Beyond the Ocean premiered in the Dramatic Competition in the Sundance Film Festival. It was nominated for a Grand Jury award, and received the Princess Grace Foundation Statue Award. Pemberton has previously shown films at The Anthology Film Archives, the Kino Museum in Moscow, The Whitney American Museum, as well as major festivals in America and Europe. His projects have been awarded funding from The Princess Grace Foundation Monaco, the Jerome Foundation, Arts Matters New Jersey State Council of the Arts, and Arts Link. He is a graduate from the State University of New York at Purchase with a BFA in film in 1990, as well as the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts: Bard College with an MFA in film in 1993. He is also the Director of the Filmmaking Program at Montclair State University.


Susan Skoog (Screenwriting Professor)
Susan Skoog is a filmmaker and television producer who has worked in the entertainment industry for over 19 years. She has enjoyed a successful career as a writer, director and producer of numerous documentary and magazine programs for such networks as VH1, Turner Network Television, Turner Classic Movies, AMC, FX, MTV, CBS, Fuse, Rave HD, Tru TV/Court TV and PBS.

In 1998 Susan wrote, produced and directed the feature film "Whatever". The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival that same year and went on to screen at festivals around the world. It was released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics.

Susan has written screenplays for Warner Brothers, HBO and MTV Films and is currently in development on a number of scripts and documentary projects. She is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in theatre and film. Susan lives in Montclair, New Jersey with her husband and three children.


Kim Spurlock (Narrative Post-production, Editing)
Kim Spurlock recently received her MFA in film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Before attending NYU, she studied anthropology in Nashville, Tennessee, worked as a bicycle courier in Washington, D.C. and shot a documentary in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Kim traces her roots to Vietnam and Appalachia, and often draws from true life to tell her stories. Her award-winning films have screened at festivals around the world. She is currently in post-production for her thesis film "Roy G. Biv." For more information about Kim and her work please visit: www.kimspurlock.com


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