2011 Latino Producers Academy™
August 9 – 19, 2011 (Feature Track) Santa Fe, New Mexico
August 10 – 19, 2011 (Documentary Track) Santa Fe, New Mexico

A NALIP National Signature Program, in association with the Hanson Film Institute, and HBO

NALIP believes that a Producer is the creative originator of films, a self-starter who recognizes ideas that have artistic or commercial merit. Producers must have passion, sensitivity for story and audience, plus the organizational ability and practical smarts to put together a project, then guide it to and through the marketplace. NALIP’s Latino Producers AcademyTM (LPA) provides our Fellows with the practical skills and knowledge to accomplish their personal goals and realize their artistic dreams as filmmakers.

The LPA is an intensive ten-day professional development workshop for Latino/a film and public television documentary producers. It is designed to support both emerging and mid-career professionals with projects in development and pre-production. The purpose of this program is to prepare you for what lies ahead both on your productions and your developing career as a professional producer. It will provide strong and practical information about the components necessary to develop, package, produce and distribute your next project, from development and material acquisition through post-production, marketing and distribution.

The LPA is a NALIP National Signature Program for NALIP members who either:
• create or intend to create independent or studio feature films as producers, as writer/producers or as part of a producer-writer or producer-director team; or
• produce/direct documentaries, independently or for public television

The 2011 LPA accepted applications from Narrative Feature Producers:
- Feature producers (including producer or producer/writers) with projects that have viable scripts ready for packaging and advancement towards production.

The 2011 LPA accepted applications from Documentary Producers in two categories:
- Documentary producers with projects in development or production who have proposals and sample tapes; they are invited with their producer/director partners
- Documentary producers with projects in post-production who have rough cuts; they are invited with their editors

The 2011 LPA includes a rigorous and interactive curriculum for Producers at all stages of their professional development.

Documentaries in post-production have the opportunity to re-cut and score sequences with intensive mentoring on their rough cuts and completion plans.

This program is competitive and highly selective. It is open exclusively to NALIP members, and only to Latino or Native American filmmakers with produced work on which they played a key creative role (Limited experience on major national film, TV or documentary production projects, however, will not be considered a negative.)

All accepted Fellows are invited on full scholarship: materials, lodging, meals and local transportation provided by our sponsors, plus honoraria for documentary editors. Travel to Santa Fe, New Mexico is the responsibility of the Fellows.

32 producing fellows or project teams are invited to attend.

Academy Fellows are selected based on the type and quality of their recent work, their commitment to careers in producing and media leadership, their dedication to sharpening their craft, and their potential to benefit from this Academy scholarship opportunity.

The 2011 Latino Producers Academy is made possible by the generous support of:
HBO; Univision; CPB; Rockefeller Brothers Fund; CCA; IAIA; the Walt Disney Company; Fox Broadcasting; the Academy Foundation; Hanson Film Institute; Hollywood Foreign Press Association; Latino Public Broadcasting; Packair; POV; the Nathan Cummings Foundation; Southwest Airlines; the Coca Cola Company; and NBCUniversal

About the Latino Producers Academy™

The revelations of the 2000 census about America's current ethnic make-up, and the companion statistics from Professor Chon A. Noriega and the National Hispanic Media Coalition about the percentage of minorities who work in mainstream and independent media point to a gap: too few Latino producers, directors, writers, actors and other technicians work in film, television and media arts professions. NALIP is committed to investigating and improving access and opportunities at all points of the media product pipeline, starting at the beginning: how we train our next generation of media makers and how we educate emerging and mid-career professionals.

NALIP's Latino Producers Academy™ provides our makers an eleven-day intensive course that covers a range of production skills and draws on the expertise of independent film and television producers and executives who are available to mentor and support our makers. Our goal with the Latino Producers' Academy™, in this and future years, is to encourage a diverse and talented group of producers and directors who will create new and greater programming achievements in film, broadcasting and media arts.

Participants are selected from a competitive field of applicants. We now hold this program in Santa Fe, New Mexico – isolated enough to encourage total immersion but near enough to media centers like Los Angeles and New York so that instructors and funders have easy access to participate. The Latino Producers' Academy™ program was developed for producers who create or intend to create feature films, documentaries, and series or other works for network, cable or public television. We see it as an opportunity for these producers to work intensively on the skills that will benefit them most, through classes and through direct contact with talented industry professionals.

The definition of "producer" includes producer/writers and producer/directors who work locally as well as nationally, in all genres of programming, whether video, film, and interactive media, studio-based television as well as field production. We encourage partnerships between producers and directors in both documentaries and feature teams.

The Latino Producers Academy™ invites the feature producers to attend with their directors. Modeled on the Sundance Filmmaker Labs, the Director Fellows are provided SAG casts and professional crews, in addition to mentors like Juan Ruiz Anchia, Ligiah Villalobos and Alfredo DeVilla, in order to rehearse, shoot, edit and score select scenes from their projects. The documentary producer/directors who are in rough-cut phase attend with their editors; their projects were reviewed and revised, with specific tutorials on storytelling, special effects, clearances, outreach and scoring of works-in-progress, plus fundraising for completion funds. The balance of Documentary Fellows are in production or development.

The LPA continues to assemble an esteemed advisory board of industry professionals plus graduate school educators at UCLA, Columbia College Chicago, UT Austin, College of Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the University of Arizona and Arizona State in an effort to provide the most effective curriculum for post-graduate Latino/a media professionals in need of additional support, mentoring and information to realize their first and second creative projects.

For more information, please contact:
Octavio Marin, NALIP Signature Programs Director
310.395.8880 / octavio@nalip.org