At the Manuscript Academy, we’ve spent a whole lot of time on long form critiques (and we love them!), but for our second Book-to-Film Panel we’ve decided to dive into the ever dreaded Elevator/Logline Pitch. And we’ve brought in two experts, Eric Mofford and Maritte Go, to dissect your pitches. We’ll also be saving plenty of time for a Q&A to round off the event.

Polish up those pitches and join us! All genres are welcome.

Whether or not you hope your work will become a movie, this is a great way to exercise your pitching muscles.

Eric Mofford is a producer, line producer and budget consultant. He has been involved in over 150 film, television and web productions as well as numerous music videos and commercials. His credits include the Emmy-winning television series 24 and the iconic indie feature, Daughters of the Dust. Recently he served as Head of Production at Lone Wolf Media overseeing documentary projects for NOVA, Nat Geo, Animal Planet, Smithsonian Channel and PBS. Previously, he served as Head of Production at Lady of the Canyon where he produced projects such as the dramatic television pilot, Finding Hope, with Chris Mulkey, James Morrison, Darby Stanchfield and Molly Quinn; and the comedy documentary, We’ll Always Have Dingle, shot in Kerry County, Ireland. He also served as Head of Production at Unconventional Media, producing the Emmy-nominated award-winning documentary, Houston We Have A Problem, and the live action portions for the EA video game, Need For Speed: Undercover, with Maggie Q.

Mofford, a member of the DGA, has written and directed projects for Disney Interactive, Saban Entertainment, The Discovery Channel, Image America, United Way and TBS. He co-produced Senior Year, a 13-part PBS documentary series on high school. He has sold two feature film screenplays and has various projects in development. His dramatic blues film, Travelin’ Trains, won a dozen national and international film festival awards and continues to play in art museum showcases over 25 years later. He has done schedules and budgets for both large studio productions and small indies and has shared that knowledge teaching numerous media workshops, both in the United States and internationally.

Marilyn R Atlas is a Talent/Literary Manager and Producer. Among her credits as film producer are "Real Women Have Curves" for HBO, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, "A Certain Desire," starring Sam Waterston, and "Echoes," which won the Gold Award at the Texas International Film Festival. She produced a movie for Lifetime, based on a YA book, airing in summer 2014, titled "The Choking Game." She is currently in development on an Asian Mini-Series with the Wolper Organization (2021). Other projects also in development.

In live theater, Marilyn co-produced the West Coast premiere of the musical "God Bless You Mr. Rosewater" by Ashman and Menken (the writers of both "Enchanted" and "Tangled"). She also co-produced the Ovation award-winning play "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday," which was made into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Peter Gallagher, amongst other plays. She was involved in several writers' debut books for HarperCollins, Grand Central Publishing, and Source Books.

Marilyn is a member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. She has long been committed to projects that celebrate diversity and the dimensional female protagonists. She has spoken at various colleges, film festivals, and industry events on creating three-dimensional, non-stereotypical characters. She is the co-author of a relationship-based, screenwriting guide called "Dating Your Character," about an organic approach to character creation for Stairway Press's Summer 2015 catalog. She is also featured in the book "Write Now!" from Penguin/Tarcher. Marilyn loves to travel and has been to over 59 countries.

Keith L Shaw is currently the Director of Operations for Jaigantic Studios. With over 27 years of experience as a Director, Producer and Assistant Director in both the television and the feature world, Keith has worked on projects for HBO, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Comedy Central, YouTube Red and Teen Nick, to name just a few. Keith served as Director on Season 3 of the Sport-Docu, 3 Gun Nation and Director/Producer on the highly regarded Indie feature, Suicide Dolls. In 2006, Keith produced the feature film, Privileged for Glass House Productions. After a season on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Keith was accepted to the DGA's Director's Single Camera Program, and shortly after, directed on the PBS series, Madison Heights. Keith has filmed on many other projects across the United States and internationally, including Production Supervisor on ABC’s, Oprah Winfrey presents The Big Give, 1st Assistant Director on NBC’s, The Kenan Show, 2nd Unit-UPM/1st AD for the soon to be released Amazon Prime series, Jack Reacher and Field Producer for 5 seasons of The Apprentice. Keith also serves as Producer/Director and Co-Partner for Last Man Out Productions. The Company was recently nominated for an Emmy award for the Short Documentary, The Prohibition Chronicles: Echos of Point Place.

Live Pitch Workshop with Hollywood Book-To-Film Producers