A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Professor Willey received her MFA from the UCLA film school and her MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. A filmmaker who was presented at the Directors Guild Young Filmmaker program, she has gone on to specialize in screenwriting and is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West.

Recently, her story, Little John, was presented by Hallmark Hall of Fame and aired on CBS. In 2003, Professor Willey’s screenwriting won the CSUN Faculty Award for Outstanding Creative Work.

Also, Professor Willey lectures and writes on diverse popular culture topics, including a catalogue essay on Von Dutch for the Kustom Kulture exhibit at the Laguna Museum of art and a lecture presentation at Cambridge University, England for the Popular Culture Association, titled ‘The Automobile - From Artifact to Art."

Professor Willey has taught all aspects of film production. Currently, she is specializing in film directing and advising students on their projects.

Joel Krantz is originally a native of Easton, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia), now living in the Los Angeles area. He is currently working as a full-time Professor of Film Production at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), with an expertise in audio and post-production sound. He joined the Department of Cinema and Television Arts in 2003 as a part-time lecturer and was later hired as a full-time faculty member in the Fall of 2011. He is an Avid Certified Master Instructor, Certified Pro Tools Expert for both Post-Production and Music, and most recently became a Dolby Atmos Certified Instructor. In addition to teaching at CSUN, he has guest lectured for the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, Ringling College of Art and Design (Sarasota, FL), Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ), and Loyola University (New Orleans, LA).

With over 25 years of industry experience, Joel has written and published more than 25 different Avid Pro Tools training course books, used at Avid Learning Partner schools worldwide. Most recently, Joel completed a training book for Dolby Labs Inc. called Dolby Vision Color Grading that is used to train color grading professionals. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, he worked in New York City for six years as a senior product specialist and training instructor for Avid Technology, Inc. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree (in Music Education) from Susquehanna University, and a Master of Music degree (in Music Technology) from New York University, where he graduated with summa cum laude honors.

His training and consulting clients include sound professionals from NBC-Universal, Warner Brothers, Disney Feature Animation, Paramount, Capitol Records, Clear Channel Worldwide, Virgin Records, MPSE Local 700, IATSE, Nickelodeon, Sound One, Magno Sound and Video, Technicolor, New York University, AT&T, Price-Waterhouse, Nile Rogers Productions, NBET, National Public Radio (NPR), Sony Pictures, Sony Music, ABC, CBS, and FOX.

His film sound credits include Let Them Eat Cake (Pastriology), War of the Gods, You Try Living Here, and Sojourn. In addition to working in film sound, Joel recorded, edited, and mastered the audiobook, The Story Solution: 23 Actions All Great Heroes Must Take, television PSAs for the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department, and the LA City Attorney’s Office, as well as promos for Fox Television, DIRECTV, Anthem Blue Cross, and the Phillips Graduate Institute. Joel is also an active member of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE), and the University Film & Video Association (UFVA). Although teaching is his passion, Joel keeps himself busy outside of CSUN with freelance film and video projects, consulting, publishing, and spending time with his daughters (Natalie and Samantha), wife (Michele) and chocolate Labrador Retrievers (Dove and Nestle). Hobbies include hiking, biking, swimming, road trips, and anything outdoors. Joel is also an enthusiastic Start Trek fan who has seen all episodic series and movies to date.

Michael Hoggan is a native from Phoenix, Arizona and completed his BA and MA in Art from San Diego State University. During this same time frame he also acquired teaching credentials in Elementary, Secondary and Junior College Education. As a graduate student he received 1st place with his sculpture presentation in the famed San Diego County State Fair in Del Mar. After graduation his life as a burgeoning artist took a turn when he arrived in Los Angeles and began working in the CBS Network Promotional Department. The intense, high paced experience was the birth place of his life in filmmaking. Here the full scope of the postproduction process was learned in a baptism of fire. Gathering of material, writing, editing, sound and music design, sound mixing, negative cutting, hot splicing and the politic of human negotiation with the various executives at the network were all a part of this delicious boiling stew.

During the next 30 years he has enjoyed a plethora of experiences in the Motion Picture Industry. As a writer he received his first screen writing credit for "The French Connection", an episode of Miami Vice. He served as Editor of the CINEMEDIATOR, the monthly periodical for the American Cinema Editors from 1993 to 1995.

Currently he is in the final stages of completing a text book on the ART AND CRAFT OF MOTION PICTURE EDITING, perhaps the first book to attempt to describe the scope of this amazing craft and art form.

He directed second unit for the MIAMI VICE and the CRIME STORY series for NBC. He earned his first directing credit with "The Cell Within" an episode of MIAMI VICE.

The majority of his time in the Motion Picture Business was spent as a picture editor. He has edited on over 20 different TV series including such diverse shows as: EARLY EDITION , COP ROCK, MIAMI VICE, COMIC VIEW, and FANTASY ISLAND. There were assignments on TV pilots such as The Big Easy, Misfits of Science, Celebrity and Homefront. There were also assignments doing long form TV with such projects as the six hour mini series FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, and the two hour MIAMI VICE special. During this course of the time he received two Emmy nominations and two ACE Eddie nominations for his work on "Smugglers Blues" an episode of MIAMI VICE and "Snafu" the pilot of HOMEFRONT.

Michael has had the opportunity to serve on the Board of Directors of the American Cinema Editors (the Phi Beta Cappa organization of the film editing profession) for three terms and served one term as its President from 1992-1994. He has also served on judging panels for the TV Academy, CableACE, and ACE Eddie.

Education 

• M.F.A., Film and Media Arts, Temple University
• B.F.A., Painting, Tyler School of Art

Teaching Experience

California State University, Northridge, CA

Fundamentals of Film Production
Principles of Production Management
Aesthetics of Film and Television
Introduction to Digital Filmmaking
Designing the Media Message
Introduction to Mass Media

Columbia College – Hollywood, Tarzana, CA

Cinematography 1
Experimental Video Workshop
Principles of Production

California State University, Channel Islands

Digital Filmmaking

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

Writing for Media I
Writing for Media II
Media Arts II
S-16 Cinematography Workshop
Film and Video Analysis

Industry Experience

Before becoming a professor, Karen worked as a freelancer in Los Angeles and Philadelphia as Assistant Producer, Assistant Director, Assistant Producer, Prop Master and Wardrobe Stylist in independent film, commercial and industrial production. Clients included Betsey Johnson, NJ Lottery, NFL Films, Turkey Hill, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Philadelphia Weekly, Tyco Toys, Hollywood Gum, and Bell Telephone.

Creative Work

Karen Dee Carpenter is a multidisciplinary artist working in film, theater, emerging media and visual art. She has produced several films for which she has received Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in both Filmmaking and Screenwriting. Her film, My Scarlet Letter, was awarded “Best Graduate Film” by five festivals, including the Hamptons International Film Festival. This film was a Finalist in the Akira Kurosowa Memorial Foundation competition and had a national theatrical release as part of the GenArt/Acura Screening series. Her subsequent film, Sarah + Dee, was honored with the prestigious Princess Grace Award and screened at several festivals, including Aspen Shortsfest, Newport Beach International and Mill Valley Film Festival. Her film, You Try Living Here screened internationally and is currently being developed into an episodic series.
Karen’s screenplays have been finalists in American Gem Short Script Competition and the CineStory Screenwriting Awards. She was invited to participate in the IFP Film Market with the feature-length script, Pick-Up. Her fulllength theatrical play, The Lamentable Tragedie of Darcy Robinson, was previously workshopped at the Kennedy Center Summer Writing Intensive, was a Semifinalist for the O'Neill American Playwright's Conference and received a staged reading at the Company of Angels, Los Angeles in 2019. Her short play, You Try Living Here, was published by Leicester Bay Theatricals as part of the New Play Development Workshop anthology of new works.
Karen has written for musical theater and she is currently developing the virtual reality opera, "Muse of the
Underworld", which will go into production in Fall 2021. This project was invited to compete at Stereopsia in Brussels and was a finalist in the 2018 XR Alliance competition. For 2022, Karen has been appointed a Senior Visiting Fellow at the American University of Classical Studies in Athens Greece where she will be conducting research and writing Beautiful Monsters, a series of short virtual reality operas based on The Odyssey by Homer.
Karen’s artwork has been exhibited internationally and she has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Partners of the Americas Travel Grant for an exhibition of her paintings in Brazil. Her paintings are part of the collections of the Época Gallery, in Salvador, Bahia and the University of Delaware, among others.

Specializations/Research Interests

Karen’s recent interest in Emerging Media as a creative approach for her own work led her to participate in the development of the CTVA Emerging Media Option. In 2020 she served as a consultant and Line Producer for the virtual opera, Gianni Schicchi in collaboration with the Music and Art Departments at CSUN. At the 2020 UFVA Conference she was a Panel Moderator and Presenter for “Emerging Media: Developing a Program of Study” and in 2019 she was invited by the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts to give an Artist’s Talk on “Virtual Reality Opera” and a reading of her libretto, “Simple Machine”.

For 2022 she has been appointed a Senior Visiting Scholar at the American University of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece to further develop her new project, Beautiful Monsters. This project is a series of virtual reality opera films that utilize female characters from Greek myths.

Publication Highlights

Film Festivals and Development Programs: The Basics, Essay, Published by Focal Press, Boston. February 2017 Included in Directing for the Screen, Volume 1 in the three book series, Perform: Succeeding as a Creative Professional, edited by Anna Weinstein.
You Try Living Here, Play, published by Leicester Bay Theatricals, Newport, Maine. March 2017 An anthology of short plays developed in the New Play Development Workshop.
You Try Living Here, Artist’s Book, 100 pages, January 2015 Published by One Star Press, Paris, France.
Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World by Harriet Margolis, Alexis Krasilovsky, and Julia Stein,
Intellect Books, Bristol, U.K. and U. Chicago Press, Chicago: October 2015

Favorite Film

European Art House and American Independent films

Favorite TV Series

Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad

Emerging Media Favorite

Elizabeth Leister’s VR film “All Her Bodies”

Personal Favorite

Patti Smith’s song “Piss Factory”

Nate Thomas has directed and/or produced numerous film projects including award-winning PBS documentaries, television commercials, public service ads, feature films, etc. He spent in-flight and ground travel time with 1988 presidential candidate Jesse Jackson directing and producing for the campaign Under The Rainbow, a promotional film narrated by the late radio legend Casey Kasem. In addition, he produced several of Jackson’s television commercials. 

In Hawaii, Nate line-produced a 70mm IMAXfilm presentation for Japan’s Expo ‘89. He also produced and directed a series of award-winning anti-alcohol television public service ads for the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. In 2009 he directed and produced Family Dinner, a gripping 30 second cyber predator public service ad for television sponsored by the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice. For his efforts Thomas received a commendation from then FBI Director Robert Mueller. In 2013 the FBI released a series of television and radio public service ads produced and directed by Thomas highlighting the devastating effects of intellectual property theft and cyber bullying. The television version of these ads garnered him an Emmy Award in 2014. Thomas also produced a featurette and electronic press kit for Universal Pictures’ Ghost Dad starring Bill Cosby, and the nationally televised PBS film The Last of the One Night Stands. This film, on the big band era, won numerous awards including a CINE Golden Eagle, a Focus Award, honors at the San Francisco International Film Festival and an award from the Black American Cinema Society. It was given special screenings at the 15th annual Wellington Film Festival in New Zealand and the Smithsonian Institution where it is contained in the film archives.

Nate, a Warren, Ohio native, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. Using a graduate fellowship from Warner Brothers, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Cinema Production from the prestigious University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He is also listed in Who’s Who Among African Americans and is a member of the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy. Mr. Thomas is a tenured Professor of Cinema and Television Arts and head of the film production program at California State University, Northridge where in 1998 he was honored as the Outstanding Professorin creative activity.

Mr. Thomas won a Sony Innovator Award in recognition of his film work and  completed the independent  feature  film East  of  Hope  Street. He directed the urban drama which was co-written and co-produced with long time friend Tim Russ, of television’s StarTrek: Voyager fame. The film is a real-life story of a teenage Latina who comes of age while struggling to survive the abuses of home, the inner city, and an overburdened child protection system in a Los Angeles most of us never see. East of Hope Street won Best Feature Film at the 1998 New Orleans Urban Film Festival, Best Urban Drama at the 1998 New York International Independent FilmFestival, 1st Place, Cross Cultural at the 1998 Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Festivaland a Jury Award at the 1999 Hollywood Black Film Festival.It was also honored at the 8th Annual First Americans in the Arts Awards Show and was nominated for the prestigious Imagen Award (Spanish Image Awards).  East of Hope Streetis distributed by The Cinema Guild andhad a limited release in theaters in the Fall of 1999 and available on home video through Maverick Entertainment.

Thomas also directed the independent feature film Stompin’ starring Sinbad and Vanessa Bell Calloway. The film has been released on pay-per-view and DVD by Warner Home Video. 

Thomas has been featured in a variety of newspaper articles including the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News. He has also been featured on E! Entertainment Television, Starz Movie News, and various other television outlets.  More recently he has been a guest film lecturer in China at Shanghai University, Nanjing University of the Arts and Nanjing University of Science and Technology. 

Courses

• Classic Filmmakers
• Film as Literature
• Media & Society
• Intermediate Film Directing 

Current Research

• Contemporary Women Auteur Filmmakers
• Consumerism and race in children’s programming

Education

• M.F.A.    Yale University School of Drama
• M.F.A.    American Film Institute
• B.A.       Princeton University

Publications

"James Earl Jones," "Benson," "Doc McStuffins," and "Equal Justice."  Race in American Television: Voices and Visions that Shaped a Nation.  
      ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Publishing. 2019.

“Combat, Couture and Caribbeana: Cultural Process in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther” (Chapter). Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies. 2018.

The Referentiality and the Films of Woody Allen, Editor and Contributor. Palgrave MacMillan 2016.
      Chapter: “Darling, have you seen my Strindberg book”: Dialogism in Woody Allen’s  Match Point

“Identifying Stereotypes: The Stories TV Tells Black Children and How to ‘Appreciate Them.”  Communicating Prejudice. Vol. II. Nova Publishing. 2017.

“The West Wing by Janet McCabe.” (Review) Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Vol. 42.  Fall 2014 

Panels & Guest Lectures

University Film & Video Association Conference. Panel:  Once Upon a Time
     “Narrative by Data: The Stories Nickelodeon & Nielsen Tell Black Children” August  2013. 

Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association 111^th Conference. Panel: Woody Allen Abroad
     “Dialogism as Social Discourse in Woody Allen’s Match Point.” November 2013

University of West Virginia’s Annual Colloquium: On The Language of Humor in Literature and Film.
     “Black Romantic Comedies & the Status of African American Images at the Box Office
     Both Domestic and Abroad”  Sept. 2012

University of Houston. Guest Lecture.
     “Nonfiction Film Adaptation in Hollywood.”  October 2009.

Pacific Lutheran University Dept. of Film and Television. Guest Lecture.
     “The Relativity of Celebrity in the Expansion of Cultural Genocide”  October 2009

Broadcast Educators Association. Panel Observations of Audiences Beyond our Borders
     Exhibition Venues & Values in Trinidad & Tobago.” BEA 2009

CSU San Francisco Panel: Emerging Trends in Entertainment 
     “Storage Technology in Digital Location Shooting”  March 2008

Directing credits (partial):

HappySAD (feature film) (Special Jury Honor, Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival);

Intimate Betrayal (Starz and BET); ABC television movie Daddy's Girl
     (Emmy nomination for Best Director)

Vegan with Joy (Web series). Amazon Streaming.

Soul Food (Showtime)

The Parkers (Paramount)

The Secret World of Alex Mack  (Nickelodeon)

ESPN's Bearing the Torch: Politics & the Olympics, a documentary chronicling the history
     of the modern Olympic Games (Co-Exec Producer)

The Interrogation of Nathan Hale – World Premiere (South Coast Rep);

Mules at San Francisco's Magic Theatre.

Fences at Seattle Rep. (Second company staging)

Honors/Awards

Best Shorts Competition. La Jolla California 2013 Honors for Educational Category.
      Vegan with Joy (web series)

Pan African Film Festival. 2009 Special Jury Honors. Feature film HappySAD

Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. 1997 Daytime Emmy Nomination for Best Director.
     Daddy’s Girl (ABC After School Special)

Frances Gateward received her BA from Temple University in Radio-TV-Film, her MA in Communication Arts and Theater, and a PhD in Radio-TV-Film with a minor in Women’s Studies from the University of Maryland College Park.  She researches and teaches in the areas of international cinema, including Korean and Chinese film, Third World film, women filmmakers and African American film and popular culture.  She serves on the editorial boards of the Quarterly Review of Film and Videoand Thymos:  Journal of Boyhood Studies, and the advisory board of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television series at Wayne State University Press.  She is the co-editor of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.  One of the first recipients of the KOFIC overseas research award (South Korea) she is currently in the process of completing A Critical Filmography of Korean Cinema (Caboose Press).   Her other projects include The Blacker the Ink: African Americans and Comic Books, Graphic Novels and Sequential Art and A Powerful Thang:  Agency and Identity in African American Women’s Films.

Selected Publications

Books:
Editor, Seoul Searching: Cultural Identity and Cinema in South Korea.
      SUNY Press, 2007.

Editor, with Murray Pomerance, Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth.
     Wayne State University Press, 2005.

Editor, with Murray Pomerance, Sugar Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood. 
      Wayne State University Press, 2002.

Editor, Zhang Yimou:  Conversations.  University of Mississippi Press, 2001.

Guest editor:
Special issue of Genders #40 - “Scared of the Dark: Race and the Horror Film,” 2004.

Special issue of Post-Script (with David Desser) “Indian Cinema,” v25 #3, Summer 2006.

Essays:
 “Waiting to Exhale and the Trouble with My Own Breathing.” 
           in Seoul Searching: Cultural Identity and Cinema in South Korea.

“Wong Fei Hung in da House:  Kung Fu Cinema and Hip Hop Culture.”  
           Chinese Connections: Critical Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora 
           edited by Gina Marchetti, Peter Feng, and Tan See-Kam. Temple University Press, 2010.

“In Love and Trouble: Boys and Interracial Romance.”  
           Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth. 

“Daywalkin’ Night Stalkin’ Blood Suckas: Black Vampires in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema.”  Genders #40.

“Youth in Crisis: National and Cultural Identity in New Korean Cinema.” 
           Multiple Modernities: Cinema and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia,
           edited by Jenny Lau. Temple University Press 2003.

“Bubblegum and Heavy Metal” in Sugar Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood.

“She Devils on Wheels: Women Motorcycles and the Movies.” 
           Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in Film at the End of the 20th Century, 
           edited by Murray Pomerance. SUNY Press 2001.

“Documenting the Struggle: Women as Media Artists, Media Activists.” 
           Still Lifting Still Climbing: Contemporary African American Women’s Activism,   
           Kimberly Springer, ed. New York University Press 1999.

“Rediscovering Asian-America.”  Angles, Women Working in Film and Video.  4.1 (Fall 1999).

Scholarly and Creative Activities

Published critical book editions of film texts of FORCE OF EVIL, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, BODY AND SOUL, and the YOU ARE THERE TELEPLAYS of Abraham Polonsky; journal essays on the Hollywood Blacklist, the Eastern Writer in Hollywood, the Film Noir Artist, the Small Town in American Film, director Mitchell Leisen, writer Edwin Justus Mayer, critic Robert E. Sherwood, George Jean Nathan and the Dramatist in Hollywood.
 
Documentary Film and Video Productions
HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITERS AND THEIR CRAFT, HOLLYWOOD DIRECTORS AND THEIR CRAFT, THE HOLLYWOOD WRITER: THE STUDIO YEARS, FILM NOIR.
 
Teaching
Philosophy underscores the paramount need for engaged critical thinking, as manifested through frequent, extended, and documented analytical writing and other verbal expression. All course structure and content are designed to ensure disciplined intellectual and ethical academic performance. All criticism is education, and all education is criticism attempting to make the work of art and life itself comprehensible.
 
Degrees
PhD. 1973 University of Southern California
M.A. 1970 University of California, Los Angeles
B.A. 1964 John Carroll University