NFI Faculty

Award winning Writer, Producer, Director Zac Adams was born in Baton Rouge, LA. Adams is known for his TV shows, documentaries, and Music videos. His PBS mini - Series Southern haunts received over 6 International awards has been viewed by millions on PBS. One of his Latest documentaries "Nashville rises", is a documentary about the flood is Nashville, TN, narrated by Billy Bob Thornton. "Nashville Rises" won first place at Nashville Film Festival and aired nationally on PBS. His latest two music video, "Impossible dreams" by artist Danielle Peck and his music video "Whiskey and You" by Julie Roberts are still currently airing on CMT, both being in the top ten countdown. His latest TV series Hunger in America series, "Hunger in America narrated by "Desperate housewives" James Denton and the second "Autism in America" is is narrated by "Greys Anatomy" Chandra wilson.

Ronda Berkeley has been helping writers, directors, producers, programmers and distributors create, buy and sell movies, television and live stage programming since 1986 providing services to: CBS Network Television, Paramount Television, Walden Media, Universal Studios, Showtime Inc., USA Network, SciFi Channel, Lifetime Television, DeFilm Germany, Shorenstein Hayes Nederlander Theatres, Artisan Entertainment, Landscape Entertainment, New World Pictures, Republic Pictures, World Book Publishing and many more.

Producer/Editor, Post Production specialist. BA:Telecommunications/Creative Writing, Ball State University – Living on the "cutting edge" of the alternative comedy scene, Dave spent many precious years as an editor in Hollywood before venturing to Music City to grow his family closer to their roots. He's happy to have Trader Joe's within range, but laments the absence of his beloved In'N'Out. When Dave isn't teaching high level Avid Fu, he also produces content for broadcast, and keeps his chops in shape as a freelance editor for CMT and other local clients. When Dave is doing anything, he's quoting dialogue from the Indiana Jones saga.

Matt Coale has been shooting films since he was twelve; professionally since 1984. Matt has over 1400 commercials, 650 corporate films, 750 television projects, and 160 music videos to his credit.

And don't forget the Emmy. Matt has done it all DP, lighting, editing, and brings all his experience to NFI to teach Cinematography, lighting and how to work with 35mm Film. For a complete list of Matt's experience, visit www.mattcoale.com.

Leland is a two-time New York Times bestselling author, has authored more than thirty books, and is a former writer for Saturday Night Live. He has written and sold a screenplay to Disney and optioned another screenplay to Touchstone. He was also co-creator and head writer of the nationally syndicated TV series, "America's Dumbest Criminals." Recently he served as Executive Producer and head writer for the PBS show, "The Whole Truth" which is in negotiations as a series.

He's created advertising campaigns for national corporations like Captain D's, International Paper, Dollar General, Cracker Barrel and AT&T and has contributed to such publications as Readers Digest, George, and Maxim.

Leland is also a nationally known political media consultant who has written, produced, and directed more than 200 television and radio commercials and was awarded the prestigious Gold Pollie award for Overall Television Campaigns for his work on a highly publicized Senate race – basically, the Best Movie in Oscar terms.

Leland is an overall nice guy who has no interesting hobbies.

Steve is a location sound mixer based out of Nashville, TN. A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University's Mass Communications program, Steve has been rolling sound since 1991. The first ten years of his career was spent recording dialog on set and assisting in audio post-production. For the past decade Steve has concentrated on the part of filmmaking he is most passionate about, location sound.

Steve specializes in sync sound dialog across many genres. He is experienced in news gathering, reality tv, documentaries, commercials, and feature films. His twenty year career has taken him all over the world, from the steppes of Mongolia to Hollywood and Vine. Excerpts from his client list look like a bowl of alphabet soup:  ABC, BBC, CBS, FOX,  HGTV, MTV, NBC, TLC  and The NFL. 

He has taught classes on location sound at Vanderbilt University, and his alma mater, MTSU.

Filmmaker, Robert Myers, graduated Cum Laude from the University of Evansville in 2000 where he studied Theater Performance, and went on to receive a Film Certificate in Directing from Watkins College and a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Trevecca Nazarene University. His film and video credits as director, producer, cinematographer and editor include music videos, documentaries, commercials and feature length narratives. Additionally, Myers cinematography work on That's How Strong My Love Is (2011) and Journey Teen Project (2010) was featured in the Nashville Film Festival. Myers teaches film making classes at the Adult Education Program at Watkins College of Art, Design and Film. He has taught all kinds of filmmakers from the very young to the very old. Several of his high school students won awards at the Full Moon Film Festival in Nashville, Tennessee, including the grand prize. He has been acting and directing since childhood, and his passion for film has created a life long pursuit of excellence in the art form.

Scott Simmons was born in rural West Tennessee and didn't really realize that movies and television programming had to be made by actual people until he went to college. After getting degrees in both Television Production and Graphic Design (though not at the same time) he was in one of the early graduating classes at the Watkins Film School in Nashville, Tennessee. During that time at Watkins he discovered editing. While most of his classmates in film school wanted to be directors, Scott saw real career opportunities in post production and took a job as an assistant editor after completing film school. In 1999, Scott took the leap into freelancing. The years of freelancing in a market like Nashville gave him the opportunity to work on a wide range of projects from music videos and live concerts to commercials and television programs, industrial and corporate pieces to documentaries and the occasional narrative film. If you can name it, Scott has probably cut it.  In 2007, he accepted a position as a staff editor at Filmworkers - Nashville. He has worked on projects from artists including Kenny Rogers, Kenny Chesney, Ronnie Milsap, Rodney Atkins, Mercy Me and Rhonda Vincent to name a few. Television networks include programming for CMT, Nickelodeon, Great American Country, Speed, HGTV, Gospel Music Channel and ABC Sports. In 2005 Scott created The Editblog, a blog dedicated to all things editing and post-production which is now located as part of Pro Video Coalition, a website that brings together some of the best writers in the film, video and technology space. He's also a contributing writer to Studio Daily and Studio Monthly, one of the leading film and video trade portals on the Internet. Someday he hopes to edit on a beach with a touch screen device, a wireless hard drive and a Red Stripe.

Michael Stryker, owner of Casting Life Films, is a two-time Emmy nominated, four-time Golden Addy Award winner for his directing, cinematography, composing and sound work.

Film credits include Paramount Pictures / MTV's "The Wild Wonderful Whites of West Virginia", and music videos such as CMT country artist Danielle Peck's "Impossible Dreams" (placing top ten on CMT); Julie Roberts "Whiskey and You" (top ten on CMT) and Beau Davidson's "Blessed", (which became the campaign video for Mitt Romney during for his 2012 campaign).

Michael has received numerous awards for his short films and commercial work, and has composed musical scores for over fifty productions, including commercials, documentaries, cinema, infomercials, and TV.

For Michael, working with NFI has been an incredible experience. "NFI drops you directly into production—an experience that is a must to mature as a filmmaker" says Michael a Communications graduate from West Virginia State University. At NFI Michael teaches and mentors students in Cinema Production.

GUEST INSTRUCTORS

Mrinalini D.S was born and raised in Chennai, India. Trained in Indian Classical music from the age of five, Mrinalini's foray into films began with playback singing, a technique popular in Indian cinema, where singers record songs for soundtracks and actors lip-sync them for the camera. Mrinalini has worked with academy award winning music composer A.R.Rahman amongst other eminent musicians. This led to an interest in music production and she studied audio engineering at the SAE Institute. She followed this up with composing for a Tamil music album.

A socially conscious person, Mrinalini also played the lead in a play aimed at raising awareness about epilepsy amongst the public, which premiered in 2005 on World Epilepsy day and was reviewed by a leading Indian paper. Filmmaking felt like the next natural step and she wrote, directed and produced her first short film 'Notes of Silence' (2010) that had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Women's International Film Festival. It has also played at the New York Indian Film Festival, the Legacy Film festival (Brighton, UK) and the Jaipur International Film Festival. A screenwriting graduate of the New York Film Academy, Mrinalini's feature script tentatively titled 'Red Mondays and Turquoise Twos' was a finalist at the Sundance/Sloan Commissioning Grant and Fellowship 2012. An electrical engineer turned musician and filmmaker, Mrinalini is currently based in New York. She is working on a short film version of 'Red Mondays and Turquoise Twos' and writes film reviews online.