Bryan Wizemann Biography
Bryan Wizemann is an award winning screenwriter,
producer and director of film and television. His short film work includes Button
Soup (Johnson Museum | Cinema Village NY), The
Morning Sun (Rooftop Films | IFC), the television pilot Cooklyn (in
development with Ithaka productions), and Film
Makes Us Happy, which documents the last fight he will ever
have with his wife about making films (Hamptons Int’l Film Festival
| IFF Boston).
His experimental feature film Sense screened in the IFFM at the Angelika Film Centre. His feature film Losing Ground was adapted from his critically acclaimed New York stage play and features the original cast. It screened at the Cinequest, CineVegas, and Santa Fe film festivals, was called “fascinating filmmaking that gets to the core of humanity” by Film Threat, and is available from Netflix. His screenplay An Entire Body was recently selected as one of the top three winners of the 2007 Slamdance Feature Screenplay Competition. It is being produced by Barbara DeFina (You Can Count on Me | Goodfellas), will feature Denis O’Hare (Michael Clayton) and Jayne Atkinson (The Village) and is slated for a fall ’08 production.
Bryan Wizemann is the author of a collection of dramatic monologues, two stage plays, and seven screenplays. He is currently the director and founder of Ballast Films, an independent film production company in Brooklyn, New York. More information on film and television projects can be found at www.ballastfilms.com.
His experimental feature film Sense screened in the IFFM at the Angelika Film Centre. His feature film Losing Ground was adapted from his critically acclaimed New York stage play and features the original cast. It screened at the Cinequest, CineVegas, and Santa Fe film festivals, was called “fascinating filmmaking that gets to the core of humanity” by Film Threat, and is available from Netflix. His screenplay An Entire Body was recently selected as one of the top three winners of the 2007 Slamdance Feature Screenplay Competition. It is being produced by Barbara DeFina (You Can Count on Me | Goodfellas), will feature Denis O’Hare (Michael Clayton) and Jayne Atkinson (The Village) and is slated for a fall ’08 production.
Bryan Wizemann is the author of a collection of dramatic monologues, two stage plays, and seven screenplays. He is currently the director and founder of Ballast Films, an independent film production company in Brooklyn, New York. More information on film and television projects can be found at www.ballastfilms.com.
Director of Photography
Mark Schwartzbard Biography
Mark Schwartzbard studied film at Ithaca College,
where his junior year film was a Regional Finalist in the 23rd Student
Academy Awards. His cinematography credits include six narrative feature
films (most recently Wonderwall, a drama shot
on the streets of the Bronx, and Sex and Breakfast starring
Macaulay Culkin) three documentary features, and a healthy pile of shorts
(most recently the internet phenomenon FCU with Bill
Murray).
His documentary work has taken him to Israel, England, Holland, Italy, Romania, Mexico, and Hungary, as well as up down and back and forth across America. He’s worked with every film format from Super-8 to VistaVision, and nearly every video and HD format from Pixelvision to the Arri D20. And he loves them all equally.
Several films he’s shot for himself have played and won awards at film festivals around the country, and his experimental films have been screened at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC and the Walters Gallery in Baltimore. In 2004 he was honored for Artistic Achievement in Cinematography by the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600.
When not shooting, Mark has worked extensively as a camera assistant, where he’s gotten the chance to learn from some of the giants. Highlights include Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending, and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, as well as Little Children, Rent, Hitch, Pollock, and, the most fun of all, Borat, which led to work as a camera operator on director Larry Charles’ next two projects, notably the increasingly anticipated Religulous with Bill Maher. He also went through a period of working, at one time or another, on many of the episodic TV shows filmed on the East Coast, including Ed, Sex In the City, Third Watch, The $treet, Hack, The Wire, Philly, and just about all of the Law & Order franchises. He also has a vague memory of working on a pile of music videos for artists he can’t remember, except for Bon Jovi, and on dozens and dozens and dozens of commercials he’d mostly
rather forget.
His documentary work has taken him to Israel, England, Holland, Italy, Romania, Mexico, and Hungary, as well as up down and back and forth across America. He’s worked with every film format from Super-8 to VistaVision, and nearly every video and HD format from Pixelvision to the Arri D20. And he loves them all equally.
Several films he’s shot for himself have played and won awards at film festivals around the country, and his experimental films have been screened at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC and the Walters Gallery in Baltimore. In 2004 he was honored for Artistic Achievement in Cinematography by the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600.
When not shooting, Mark has worked extensively as a camera assistant, where he’s gotten the chance to learn from some of the giants. Highlights include Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending, and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, as well as Little Children, Rent, Hitch, Pollock, and, the most fun of all, Borat, which led to work as a camera operator on director Larry Charles’ next two projects, notably the increasingly anticipated Religulous with Bill Maher. He also went through a period of working, at one time or another, on many of the episodic TV shows filmed on the East Coast, including Ed, Sex In the City, Third Watch, The $treet, Hack, The Wire, Philly, and just about all of the Law & Order franchises. He also has a vague memory of working on a pile of music videos for artists he can’t remember, except for Bon Jovi, and on dozens and dozens and dozens of commercials he’d mostly
rather forget.
Director of Development
Andrew Semans Biography
Andrew Semans is a filmmaker based in Queens,
NY. I Know Where I'm Going, his thesis film
at The School of Visual Arts in NYC, won awards for Best Film, Best Director,
and Best Performance at the SVA Thesis Awards Ceremony and went on to play
in a number film festivals, including the Slamdance Film Festival. His
follow-up - I'd Rather Be Dead Than Live in This
World - also screened at an array of festivals and won the Best
Short Film award at the 2005 Newport Film Festival. Andrew’s latest
short film, All Day Long, was completed in
early 2007 and is currently on the festival circuit.
Film Editor
Brad Studstrup Biography
Brad Studstrup is a feature film editor who cut
Tom Noonan's Wang Dang (The Hamptons), Lawrence
Levine’s Territory (Cinequest and Durango),
and Bryan Wizemann's Losing Ground (Cinequest,
CineVegas, Sante Fe). In Losing Ground, Brad
was especially interested in the respiration of the film, creating space
for resonance. When he's not editing, Studstrup teaches at a Manhattan-based
film-editing workshop. He is a graduate of the fiction-writing program
at Brown.
