Faculty and Staff
Walker, Gary
Visual FX Supervisor and President of TexFX- an Austin based Visual FX studio dedicated to the studio and independent film community through the combined use of experience, imaginative talent and powerful technology. Gary is by trade a high-end digital compositor and has worked on Visual FX for twelve major motion pictures, including Apollo 13, Waterworld, Cast Away and What Lies Beneath, working at studios in Hollywood like Digital Domain, PDI, and Sony Pictures Imageworks. He also worked in Vancouver at Rainmaker Digital Pictures and Lost Boys Studios, creating Visual FX for features, commercials and episodic television while helping to grow a visual FX community from infancy. Gary attended the Fine Arts department at the University of North Texas. Starting his career in Dallas in 1983, Gary has over twenty-one years of experience with Computer Imagery technology.
Wesley, Richard
award winning playwright and screenwriter- Film credits include Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do it Again and the adaptation of Richard Wright's novel Native Son. TV credits include episodes of One Hundred Jump Street. Associate Professor in the Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
Wexler, Haskell
Cinematographer- He will teach a documentary workshop and is best known for his cinematography on In the Heat of the Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Secret of Roan Inish (among other Sayles films). His career has spanned nearly 5 decades of feature and documentary work. Haskell "would like to concentrate on community projects utilizing video tools… before or concurrent to learning craft we must have a serious interest in what we communicate as responsible artists."
Yahr, Harriette
Harriette Yahr is a filmmaker and writer. Her short films have screened at festivals worldwide, including Telluride, and won awards including a Gold Plaque at the Chicago Int'l Film Festival. Her latest, Baker's Men, aired on the Sundance Channel and now airs on Logo. Her journalism has appeared in BlackBook, The Advocate, Salon.com, Nerve.com, Out Magazine, Dox, The Independent Film and Video Monthly, and other outlets. She's taught filmmaking at the University of Miami and been a guest filmmaker at Dartmouth College and elsewhere. She occasionally teaches workshops and operates TheFilmConsultant.com and TheWritingConsultant.com. Harriette's taught all levels of film production, as well as scriptwriting, editing, and film aesthetics. Filmmaking grants include an NEA Regional Grant, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, and a nomination for a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. She is "filmmaker in residence" and works in Acquisitions at Seventh Art Releasing. Her website is www.yahrfilms.com
Zam, Michael
screenwriter, script doctor, and writing coach- For five years he ran NYU's adult creative writing department, where he created and developed the program's very successful screenplay certificate program. His screenplay, Lizzie Walker Slept Here, is currently being prepped for shooting next summer in Ireland. He's written comic essays and articles on film and media for a variety of publications, including Time Out, Details, INDIEwire, and as a pop culture critic he has been quoted on everything from the Golden Globes to sex on film sets in The Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning Sun, USA Today, and CNN, among many others.
