Special Guest Speakers Jono Schaferkotter and Vanessa Tomasello

Vanessa Tomasello and Jono Schaferkotter

This week our video production class was honored to host two special guest speakers, Filmmaker and multi-media artist Jono Schaferkotter and producer and owner of The Design Jungle, Vanessa Tomasello. Jono was kind enough to share his time and give two guest lectures about the storytelling process in film and guided the class through the creation of a beatsheet for our next class project. Jono returned with Vanessa to give another lecture about screenplay development and stayed to help the student teams work on their film concepts and screenplays. The class extends a big thanks to Jono and Vanessa for sharing their time, knowledge and expertise with us.

About the Guest Speakers:

Jono Schaferkotter is an artist whose work easily jumps mediums and genres. His portfolio includes large-scale paintings, mixed-media sculpture, interactive art installation, multi-media choreography and much more. In the last decade, he's created three feature length films, an internationally award winning short, music videos, international documentaries and numerous award-winning commercials. Recently, he has expanded his horizons, tackling both the world of fiction with his new novel and developing his skills as a singer/songwriter. His work has taken him around the world. While he primarily works out of San Francisco (and more recently, New York), in the last few years, he's traveled and lead teams filming in Kenya's Rift Valley Region, Tokyo and the Heilongjiang Province of China.

Vanessa Tomasello is a producer, editor and owner of The Design Jungle, a local video production house that specializes in creation of stunning corporate media for video game trailers,  corporate branding videos, product and tech demos and web campaigns.