instructors

Jem Schofield
Program Director/Producer/Educator

Jem is the founder of theC47, an online and offline resource for production based training, information and services. He is a producer, author and educator who teaches production and post-production at workshops, trade shows and special events. He is also the founder and program director of The Filmmaker's Intensive.

For more about Jem & his whereabouts visit theC47.com

Josh Apter
Director/Editor/Filmmaker

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Josh Apter Attended NYU's Graduate Film Program, where his film, The 53rd Calypso, was honored with the Martin Scorsese Award for achievement in directing. The film, which stars Edward Norton, received numerous awards for directing, editing, and cinematography at film festivals across the country.

For his first feature as director, Kaaterskill Falls, Josh was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards - the John Cassavetes Award and Best Debut Performance. Kaaterskill Falls was also awarded the Critic's Jury Prize at the IFP/West Los Angeles film Festival. It screened on the Sundance Channel, and is available wherever movies are sold, rented or streamed.

Josh has worked in all areas of filmmaking, from location sound recordist on numerous feature films, to videographer for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, where he recorded the testimonies of over 150 Holocaust survivors. As a film editor,  Josh has worked on over ten feature films including The Holy Land (winner Slamdance FF/Cavu Pictures Distributor), Kaaterskill Falls and Barbecue is a Noun (Audience Award for best Documentary at the Rome International Film Festival and the River Run Film Festival).

From his love of post-production, Josh founded Manhattan Edit Workshop in 2002.  MEWShop is an Apple, Avid, Adobe, Autodesk and Assimilate Authorized Training Center offering a variety of classes in the art and technique of film editing.  With clients ranging from Rainbow Media, HBO, NBC and CNN, Manhattan Edit Workshop has become the premier training destination for the highest-level content creators and media professionals.

Josh currently is completing post-production on his second feature film, a love story about a small-time pot dealer titled, “Delivery Method,” while also writing and developing several projects for film and television.

Josh’s work as a writer has earned him awards such as the IFP North Film fund, a $25,000 development grant (for Ice-Nine, co-written with Peter Olsen) and gotten the attention of producers such as Andrew Lauren (The Squid and the Whale,) for whom Josh wrote and developed the screenplay, “On the Rocks,” and Academy Award winning Producer Marty Richards, (Chicago) who hired Josh to pen an original treatment based on a Nazi counterfeiting scheme in WWII.  Josh’s original screenplay, a family comedy titled, “The Dukes of Tannersville” was optioned by Academy Award winning producer Tamara Tiehel and most recently his work on Ice-Nine, a thriller in the middle of packaging, caught the attention of producer Brad Kessell, for whom Josh wrote and pitched an American adaptation of the hit Asian horror-thriller, “Silk.” 

For more about Josh visit peteandjoshmakemovies.com and mewshop.com

Chuck Workman (One Day Master Director's Class*)
Writer/Director/Producer

Chuck Workman received an Oscar for the live action short Precious Images which was selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry. In his more than 30 years in the industry Workman has written, directed and produced numerous feature films, documentaries and shorts. He has received 10 Emmy nominations and has created well-known sequences for 20 Academy Awards presentations. Workman directed and produced Superstar, the acclaimed documentary about Andy Warhol, as well as The Source, about the Beat Generation, which premiered at Sundance. His documentary about experimental film, Visionaries, appeared at the Tribeca Festival and at Michael Moore's Traverse City Festival. He teaches film production at SUNY Purchase College where he was appointed a Distinguished Artist. He’s currently in production on two feature documentary films, one on a world-famous actor/director, and another on several filmmakers’ takes on the nature of cinema. 

For more about Chuck Workman and his work, visit IMDb

Susan Froemke (One Day Master Producer/Director Class*)
Producer/Director

Susan Froemke is a non-fiction filmmaker with over thirty documentary films to her credit from the classic Grey Gardens (1976) to Lalee’s Kin (2001), an HBO film on poverty that was nominated for an Academy Award, to Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, co-directed with Matthew Heineman, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

A four-time Emmy Award-winner, Froemke has been in production on Wagner's Dream for over three years, filming in New York, Montreal and Quebec City. Previously for the Metropolitan Opera, Froemke produced and directed James Levine: America's Maestro, an American Masters presentation on PBS in 2011, and The Audition (2010), an in-depth look at the Met’s National Council Auditions, which follows the dramatic journey of the 2007 finalists as they compete to sing on the Met stage  before the country's leading opera administrators.

For HBO, Froemke co-produced two special event series: Momentum In Science: The Alzheimer’s Project (2009) and Addiction (2007), an unprecedented 14-part documentary series about drug and alcohol addiction, which won the 2007 Emmys Governors’ Award for Special Programming.

Before starting her own production company in 2003, Froemke was the principal filmmaker at legendary Maysles Films in New York for over two decades, following the death of David Maysles.  She has long been a disciple of “direct cin­ema,” a style of filmmaking pioneered in the 1960s by the Maysles Brothers. Like “cinema verité” in France, direct cinema presents the drama of real life as it unfolds with minimal intervention.

Froemke’s tremendous range as a filmmaker can be seen in the diversity of her subjects. She co-produced with Peter Gelb several co-productions between Maysles Films and Sony Classical, including: Ozawa (1985), Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic (1985), Horowitz Plays Mozart (1986), Soldiers of Music: Rostropovich Returns to Russia (1991), Baroque Duet (1992), and Recording The Producers: A Musical Romp With Mel Brooks (2001), which won a Grammy Award.

Froemke produced and co-directed Christo In Paris (1990), Karajan In Salzburg (1988), and--in the rock and roll arena--her updated version of The Beatles! The First U.S. Visit (1991), Conversations With The Rolling Stones (1994) and--for the J. Paul Getty Trust—Concert Of Wills: Making The Getty Center (1997) about the enormous Los Angeles arts complex, designed by renowned architect Richard Meier.

Previously, for HBO's American Undercover, Froemke directed Abortion: Desperate Choices (1992), which earned her an Emmy, a Peabody Award, and a DuPont-Columbia Award. Also, for HBO, she produced and directed Letting Go: A Hospice Journey (1996) and Lalee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001), a powerful exploration of poverty and education in the Mississippi Delta. For Lifetime Television, Froemke directed 100 Years Of Women (1999) and Fear No More: Stop Violence Against Women (2001).

For more about Susan Froemke and her work, visit IMDb

David Zieff (One Day Master Editor's Class*)
Editor/Producer
David Zieff has been editing documentaries, feature films and television for almost three decades, working in music, comedy and sociopolitical arenas, occasionally at the same time. Recently Zieff was a creative consultant on the Oscar® award-winning documentary The Cove, and edited and produced ESPN’s Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks, receiving rave reviews at Sundance 2010, as well, winning a Peabody Award for the doc mini-series Black Magic. Zieff edited and produced Crazy Love, a Sundance nominee and winner of the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary. He was the supervising editor of the critically-acclaimed and multiple award-winning Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, shaping over 1600 hours of footage into a Sundance hit, and one of the most celebrated music films of all time. On television, Zieff was the senior editor of Michael Moore’s Emmy®-winning series The Awful Truth and TV Nation, and many signature Comedy Central shows including Upright Citizens Brigade, Insomniac, TV Funhouse, and Strangers With Candy. Other work includes Left of the Dial, about the startup of the liberal radio network Air America for HBO, the Emmy- nominated The Case For Innocence for PBS/Frontline, the BBC series Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends, and the recently released Exporting Raymond, about producer Phil Rosenthal’s travails in bringing his hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond to Russia.

For more about David Zieff and his work, visit IMDb

*Subject to schedule availability. Currently David is scheduled to teach a one day master class during the second week of TFMI. Only an unforeseen project would change that. We do not anticipate that happening (and neither does David). We do, however, have to post this disclaimer just in case.

Matt Porwoll
DP/Camera Assistant/DIT

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Matt Porwoll studied film at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.  Upon graduation, he moved to New York City working as the Rental Floor Manager at Abel Cine Tech for two and a half years.

Currently, Matt primarily works as a commercial camera assistant and camera operator / cinematographer for documentary films.  His operator credits include Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot, directed by Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, which premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, and By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, directed by Amy Rice and Alica Sams for HBO, following Obama’s presidential campaign since June 2006.  As cinematographer, the feature documentary No More Games is currently in post-production.  Following the 2008 US Homeless World Cup soccer team, the film shows how through sport, homeless men and women can get back on their feet and on course with their lives.

Apart from his work on documentaries, Matt has also worked as a camera operator for the MOJO / Dos Equis series “M.I.A.,” fashion videos for W Magazine, Ralph Lauren, and Y-3, as well as music videos and performances for such performers as Ryan Adams, Beck, The Raconteurs, N.E.R.D., and Justin Timberlake.

For more about Matt, visit mattporwoll.com

Giuseppe Malpasso
Director of Photography/Editor

Born in 1972, Lentini, Italy. He began his career as a filmmaker in 1990 in Rome. He lives and works in New York. He has made documentaries, reporting all over the world. Directors such as Peter Greenaway and Michelangelo Antonioni have been inspirational, as well as the photographers Edward Steichen and Robert Frank. He has been working with major Italian broadcasting networks such as: RAI (the biggest television company in Italy), Mediaset , Sky Italia, LA7, and MTV (Italy).

When he moved to New York he has also begun to work with international broadcasting networks such as: RTL
(Europe’s largest TV-based network in Germany); MTV (England), National Geographic International, TSI (Switzerland) Seven Network (Australia), and TVNZ (New Zealand). Among his works are: Peppino Impastato, A Man a Doctrine (Doc, 2002); Moderna (Doc,2003) , The Emergency of Baroque (Doc,2004), Friendly Fire (Doc,2007), We Are the Future ( Musical, 2004), Blackout (feature,2008), Last Stop ( Doc – 2009), and Pesci Rossi in New York (Musical, 2009). In 2008, he covered much of the presidential campaign in America.

He won a Gold Panda for the best cinematography at Sichuan TV Festival in China for the documentary Last Stop.

For more about Giuseppe, visit giuseppemalpasso.com

*Subject to schedule availability.