Pasadena, CA – The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) kicked off its third annual Latino Scriptwriters Intensive, which was created in 2016 to develop pilots, written by seasoned writers, for pitching and development at television and streaming entities.
The six-week program, a partnership between Univision and NHMC, and led by former NBC vice president of story and writer development, Geoff Harris, mentors 8 writers who are expected to complete a pilot television program that can be used to secure representation or for pitching to production companies and networks. The writers were selected from among 140 Latino professionals who have completed NHMC’s prerequisite Television Writers Program. Southwest Airlines and Final Draft are program supporters.
“What’s on television now is a distortion of today’s multicultural reality,” said Alex Nogales, NHMC president, and CEO. “Only by increasing the number of Latino and other people of color writers who create the content that networks broadcast can television programming more closely mirror society. The Latino Scriptwriters Intensive, along with our Television Writers Program, helps spur the change we need to see.”
The 2018 class of Latino Scriptwriters Intensive participants include:
Efrain Colon
Aimee Garcia
Liz Rivera
Valeska Rodriguez
Jordan Rubio
Ashley Soto
Joseph Vargas
Mercedes Valle
NHMC president Alex Nogales
Latino Scriptwriters Intensive alumni who are currently developing and producing their own shows for major television networks and streaming services include:
Chris Garcia who landed his first major writing credit with Fox, which is developing a comedy he created and for which he and Modern Family writers Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh wrote the pilot.
Zayre Ferrer who created and is showrunner of Tijuana, which recently began production and will air domestically on Univision and debut internationally on Netflix. The series is co-produced by Fusion Media Group Studios’ Story House and Netflix.
April 9: Application Period Opens for Television Writers Program
NHMC also announced that the application period for its annual Television Writers Program will open April 9 and close Aug. 5, 2018. Program information and application form are available at http://www.nhmc.org/writersprogram.
The program, which begins in October, prepares working Latino writers for positions at major television networks.
Conducted in a real-life writers’ room, the five-week program is also led by Geoff Harris.
Since its launch in 2003, the Television Writers Program has trained more than 100 aspiring television writers, 35 percent of whom have earned positions on award-winning and top-rated TV shows featured on ABC, BET, CBS, CW, FOX, HBO, NBC, Amazon, Disney Jr., Hulu, Lifetime and Netflix.
Commentaires