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.

Maritte Go is a Filipino-American filmmaker hailing all the way from West Palm Beach, Florida. Getting her start in theater, she began as an actress and went onto doing corny TV shows and commercials as a kid. This eventually led to attaining her BFA in acting from Florida State University. She then moved to LA where she was accepted into USC’s prestigious Masters in Film and TV program and recently graduated. Go is a recent Fellow recipient of Armed With a Camera. Her latest Indie feature she produced called, Love Land, won the San Francisco Film Grant. She now happily pays the bills Directing, Producing, and Editing Indie feature films, commercials, and music videos for companies such as Disney, Sony, and State Farm.

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.

Live Book-to-Film Critique Panel: The Elevator Pitch