Director: Carissa McElravy

I want to create my own characters and bring my own stories to life on screen.
My greatest desire is that when these stories are told, they will move and inspire people to a higher level of consciousness. Many of my stories are ones that are deeply personally to me, and in telling them, I find I am able to touch many others. And this is the beauty of film, and why I tell the stories that I tell. To inspire others to look inward into their own emotional lives. And to me, that’s a pretty incredible opportunity I am not willing to pass by.

Producer: Teresa Zarmer

Teresa grew up in the California Bay Area but have been in Southern California for college for the past three years. Being from the Silicon Valley, it would have been easy to dismiss art in favor of math and science, but her parents were big on family movie night, and to them movies were a part of life as much as anything K-12 had to offer. At Chapman University, she's been able to enjoy bringing together the creativity of storytelling, the logistical steps it takes to get there, and the technical skills it takes to pull the whole thing off. 

Producer: Annie Kimmelman

Annie was born and raised in the Greenwich Village of New York City and was exposed to music and art at an early age. During high school, she worked as a concert photographer & videographer, which soon led to a passion of film and storytelling. During the past year she worked under the Weinstein brothers at The Weinstein Company in Tribeca, and fell in love with the production side of filmmaking. Now in her final year at Chapman University, she is completing her BFA in Creative Producing and hopes to pursue a career in Manhattan once she graduates. She is thrilled to produce Very Funny with a team of incredibly talented filmmakers!

Unit Production Manager: Sabina Fooks

Sabina's belief in the healing capabilities of entertainment could be combined with her love for managing teams and organizations, she applied to Chapman University’s film program. Now entering into her fourth and final year at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts’ Creative Producing program, she has acquired the logistical, practical, and management skills to help visual oracles develop their stories, as well as the work management skills to make their screenplay a reality.

Screenwriter: Carlotta Harlan 

Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Carlotta fell in love with writing when she was eight years old and has been pursuing a career in the arts ever since. She won her first writing competition when she was eleven, placing first in state and second in the country. From there she developed her skill and decided to focus on film. In middle school she wrote a short story a day, and in high school, when no film classes were offered, she created her own. Now attending Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts as a screenwriting major, Carlotta has been fortunate enough to write three senior theses, one of which is currently in the festival circuit, the other two in preproduction. She is also in the process of adapting a client’s book, and working with Academy Award Winner and mentor Nick Reed on a television pilot.

Director of Photography: Thomas Taugher

Thomas is from Dublin California, a small town in the San Francisco bay area. It was in highschool that he was given the opportunity to start actively pursuing film as a profession. Thomas began interning at TV30, a local TriValley broadcast network. What started out as an internship in high school became a full time job after graduating. Here, he was able to explore the various disciplines of filmmaking; from editing, producing, to shooting. Over the two years of working there, shooting became Thomas’s niche. In 2013, Thomas had the unique opportunity of being able collaborate with Rachel Morrison (cinematographer) on Fruitvale Station.This was a feature film that was being shot in the Bay Area, following the life and unfortunate death of Oscar Grant. Working on a project of this scope and scale is what perpetuated Thomas’s move to Los Angeles with the intent of learning and growing as a cinematographer.

Editor: Coleman Parks

Cole Parks is a senior editor at Dodge College, with a minor in English. He grew up overseas and decided to pursue film at a young age, choosing to specialize in editing due to his fondness for technology and computers. Aside from editing, he specializes in graphic design, DI workflow, and writing fiction. He hopes to work as a post-production artist after college.

Sound Designer: Jack Floyd

I am a Seattle-born film major with an emphasis in Sound Design. Growing up, I’d always been a huge fan of animated films (Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks etc). I was amazed at how the filmmakers could create entire worlds out of human-made pictures and sounds, and by the time I had reached High School I knew that I wanted to be a part of it. I was particularly impressed by the film Wall•e and the effort involved in designing the soundscape of a post-apocalyptic world paired with the smooth, technologically advanced elegance
of the starship Axiom. In fact, the special features on the DVD included a small documentary about how they created laser sounds and robot voices in the studio. After watching that five or six times, I knew I wanted to be involved with sound. In my Junior year I enrolled in the very first film class ever offered at my small school, and by Senior Year I had been accepted as a student at the Dodge School of Film and Media Arts. Since then I have taken every film class I could get my hands on and have been involved with a dozen student films over the past few years. My biggest inspirations are Andrew Stanton,Ben Burt, and the immortal John Williams.