Stage 9 Digital Media Inks New Partnership for Short-Form Content

BURBANK, May
23: Disney-ABC Television Group’s Stage
9 Digital Media and Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television
have formed an exclusive partnership to give students an opportunity to develop
original short-form content for the recently launched new-media studio.

Participating students are
invited to join a Stage 9-sponsored workshop in which they pitch and develop
original short-form projects, working with the studio’s creative and production
executives on the scripts, budgets and schedules. In June, projects selected by
the studio and university will be put into pilot production.

The students are invited
from the Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television’s 2008
graduating class from the undergraduate and graduate film and screenwriting
programs, with the intention of giving these young professionals an opportunity
to enter the industry upon graduation.

Stage 9 launched in
February as an experimental new-media studio that develops, produces, markets
and distributes original short-form programming. This new deal extends the
studio’s strategy to partner with emerging creative talent to produce
compelling original content for digital-media exhibition.

“These students are the
demographic that looks to the Internet as their main source of entertainment,”
said Barry Jossen, the general manager of Stage 9 Digital Media. “By
collaborating with these Fellows, the Stage 9 team benefits from a hands-on
working relationship with young filmmakers who are creating some of the most
exciting, entertaining content in new media.”

“We are very proud to join
forces with Stage 9 Digital Media,” added Teri Schwartz, the dean of Loyola
Marymount University School of Film and Television. “The foundation of our
School of Film and Television is firmly rooted in master visual storytelling
grounded in humanism and diversity. This collaboration is very beneficial, as
it offers our film school the unique opportunity to partner with an entity as
forward thinking as Stage 9 Digital Media in establishing exciting new
opportunities for our students as they transition, upon graduation, into the
industry as the new generation of imaginative, skilled storytellers and
creative leaders. In turn, it gives Stage 9 the opportunity to mine the rich
and fertile ideas that come from our diverse and highly creative student
filmmakers, who have wholeheartedly embraced this dynamic field of web-based
content and new digital media.”

—By Irene Lew