Tate Allyn has a viral Youtube Channel with over 70,000 Twitter followers and 4,000,000 views as well as multiple national television appearances on CNN, E!’s The Soup, Yahoo News, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Mashable, and International Business Times. She is the Head of Marketing for Colaborator- an online marketplace which connects companies looking to create video content directly with film & video professionals. She works hands on with all aspects of the company including but not exclusive to social media, fandom campaigns, graphics, online & physical marketing, video production, press releases, and content creation to ensure maximized relatability and social media strength moving forward. Having amassed a huge following in the Gaming/Reddit sector, she partners with the Fullscreen Youtube Network.

Austin-based filmmaker Miguel Alvarez has received awards from the Directors’ Guild of America, Panavision’s Emerging Filmmaker program, the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, and the Austin Film Society for his films,Tadpoles, Veterans, KID and Mnemosyne Rising, and Atlantic City. He was a Screenwriting fellow for the Latino Screenwriting Project sponsored by Cinefestival and Sundance and one of the inaugural participants in the Kickstarter-Kodak Initiative. He also currently serves as Executive Producer of Austin Film Festival’s television show, On Story.

Deena Kalai is an intellectual property attorney and startup advisor with offices in both Austin and Manhattan. She represents individuals and businesses engaged in entertainment, intellectual property and technology, including film, television, fashion, literary publishing, and mobile/interactive media. Deena has a particular interest in copyright fair use and assists many filmmakers and artists each year in assessing the applicability of this important doctrine to their projects. Additionally, she has experience in finance, corporate, and employment matters related to the entertainment and technology industries.

Since 2009, Kim LeBlanc has been on staff at the Texas Film Commission sharing the good word about all of the wonderful resources available for creative industry professionals working in Texas.

As the Texas Film Commission’s Production & Community Relations Specialist, she works closely with writers, directors, producers, studio executives and community leaders in marketing and promoting Texas as a competitive, global destination for media industry projects. She also manages the Texas Film Commission’s Film Friendly Texas Program.

Prior to working at the Texas Film Commission, Kim worked at the Austin Film Society, the Austin Film Festival and worked as the Assistant to the Director Robert Rodriguez at his film production company Troublemaker Studios.

Andrew Logan is a writer and producer based in Austin, TX. As a writer, Andrew was listed on the 2015 Black List for the screenplay he co-wrote called Chappaquiddick, a political thriller that chronicles the true story of what is described as the seven most dramatic days of Senator Ted Kennedy’s life. The film, directed by John Curran, and starring Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, and Ed Helms, is currently in post-production. Additionally, Andrew co-produced two 2014 Sundance Film Festival premieres: Kat Candler’s Hellion, starring Aaron Paul and Juliette Lewis, and Todd Rohal’s Rat Pack Rat, which won the Special Jury Prize for Unique Vision. He also produced Until We Could, a short film directed by David Lowery & Yen Tan and narrated by Robin Wright & Ben Foster, which screened at Outfest Film Festival and the Cannes Court Métrage in 2014. Most recently, he produced 6 Years directed by Hannah Fidell and  the documentary The Jones Family Will Make a Way. Both premiered at SXSW in 2015. He also is an executive producer on Rick Alverson’s Entertainment, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Andrew also served as a story consultant on the documentary Richard Linklater—dream is destiny, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Writer/Director Melissa Dalley is an Austin based filmmaker who has over a decade of movie making experience. After graduating from New York University she bounced around the world writing and making art until settling in Austin in 2005. Working on indie films and multi-million dollar features alike, she has learned filmmaking from the ground up, starting as an intern and Production Assistant and going on to be the First Assistant Director on over a dozen films. She produced the award-winning film Loves Her Gun, which had its World Premiere at the 2013 South By Southwest Film Festival, winning the Louis Black/Lone Star Award for best film made in Texas that year. More recently she produced The Big Spoon, an unromantic comedy that premiered at Austin Film Festival in 2016. Currently she is in pre-production for the film Shorthand which will be her first feature to direct.

Brian Gannon has worked for the Austin Film Commission for four years and been the Director of the AFC for the past year and a half. Prior to that, he supervised content and video creation at Paul Bernhard Exhibits Design, worked in various areas of film production freelance and as a production liaison at the Texas Film Commission. He was born in Ireland and lived Boston and Milwaukee before moving to Austin a decade ago. Brian received a BA in Film Production and English BA from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The Austin Film Commission works to bring film, television and commercial production to Austin as well as advocating and assisting with production locally.

Bio to come!

Cindy McCreery is an Assistant Professor of Screenwriting in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at The University of Texas at Austin.  Previously she taught screenwriting at UC Santa Barbara and The UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting.  She is a graduate of the Walt Disney/ABC Feature Writing Fellowship program and has sold feature projects to New Line Cinema, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, National Geographic Films, Warner Brothers, MGM and most recently Branded Entertainment.   She has also written two original movies for The Disney Channel and is currently writing an adaptation of “The Ugly Duckling” for Branded Entertainment.  In the Spring of 2014 she co-wrote two episodes of the SyFy series, “Haven” based on Steven King’s short story, “The Colorado Kid”.  In the Fall of 2015 she sold to TNT the one hour drama pilot, “PARKER” based on the Richard Stark/Donald Westlake Novels.  In January of 2016, she and her TV-writing partner, Scott Shepherd were hired to adapt the book, The Seventh Day (written by Shepherd) for Televisa USA.  They co-wrote all ten episodes.  In June 2016, NBC bought a one-hour-drama horror pilot pitch from McCreery and Shepherd.