Lee Boot
Lee Boot’s (Writer/Director/Narrator) video and internet works have been broadcast and exhibited nationally and internationally in a number of venues including Public Television, the Johannesburg Biennial in South Africa, London’s Serpentine Gallery, and Baltimore’s Contemporary Museum. Boot left his sixteen-year career as a school teacher career in 2000 (a career that earned him a Distinguished Teacher Award from the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars) to work toward using film as a way to help make powerful and profound information part of our culture. Euphoria is the first major project that is part of that goal. This is based on the idea that societal norms influence behavior, and that well a informed-culture will promote positive shifts toward healthy and fulfilling living.
John Chester
John Chester (Executive Producer/Co-Director/Director of Cinematography) has been involved in the entertainment industry since the early 1990s. His talents as a Director and Cinematographer earned him a 2002 Emmy nomination, a Bronze Telly Award, and three 2001 Telly Awards.
Chester’s skills were developed under respected producers Bruce Lansbury and Mark Burley. In 1994, Chester became an Executive Producer for the award winning Baltimore facility, “The Education Channel.” While there, he created a conduit to privately distribute two programs Rap it Out and Network Underground. After screening his film, and directing several TV spots, Chester was called “one of the five up and coming Producers/ Cinematographers in Maryland” by Media Matters (WYPR 88.1). In 1997, Chester started SouthPaw Entertainment, Inc. Chester’s most recent projects include Random 1, a guerilla philanthropy reality show on A&E, and the documentary Lost in Woonsocket.
Capella Fahoome
Capella Fahoome (Producer) has been a producer since 1994. She has a talent for making the unlikely happen – while remaining on time and on budget. Two of her favorite challenges were suspending a 30-foot fully functioning copper chandelier from a bridge over the Chesapeake Bay and erecting 12-foot smiley faces along the Atlantic Ocean. Capella’s attention to detail, organization, crew relations, and passion has made all of her productions successful. Her portfolio includes feature films, a television documentary series, national and regional television commercials, music videos, and short films.
Stacy Arnold
Stacy Arnold (Executive Producer) is a trans-disciplinary artist, educator and businesswoman. She has executive produced InfoCulture’s flagship projects, the film Euphoria and the online documentary series Fieldtrip. As a former classroom and K-12 resource teacher for 12 years in public schools, Ms. Arnold brings expertise in teaching, curriculum writing, and project management to the InfoCulture team. She has spearheaded the educational and institutional outreach programs for Euphoria including writing and producing a comprehensive e-learning website. Additionally, she administers the NIH SBIR/STTR grants. Ms Arnold has exhibited her artwork locally and nationally and is currently represented by Jordan Faye Contemporary. Her formal education includes a BFA from MICA, a MFA in innterelated Media fromTowson University and a K-12 teaching certification. Ms. Arnold lives in Baltimore with her husband and two children.
Larry Barnes
Larry Barnes’ (Orginal Score) music has been featured on festivals and concert series on three continents. His music has been described by The New York Times as showing a fine sensitivity.” Barnes is the recipient of the Cleveland Orchestra Premiere award, a National Endowment for the Arts Composer Fellowship and 27 ASCAP awards. His Toccata: Act of War for solo piano, inspired by the horrific events of 9-11-2001, was released in 2007 as Sonance: New Music for Piano. Commissions include music for Bertram Turetzky, Sine Nomine Singers, and the Quadrant Ensemble. His music is recorded on Capstone, MRS and MMC record labels. Beginning summer of 2008, an album of Barnes’s music will be available onine. Barnes is currently professor of music and Bingham Fellow for excellence in teaching at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
Kevin Hill
Kevin Hill (Sound Design) is the owner of Studio Unknown, LLC a full service audio production studio specializing in creative sound design, music composition and surround sound mixing. Kevin has over 15 years experience in sound design and engineering for live theater, music recording/producing and audio post-production for feature films, TV, radio, web and corporate videos. He has appeared on many online websites providing custom music/sound design for companies such as Discovery Communications, and the National Park Service. He has also worked on feature films, TV, radio and corporate videos for such clients as Pfizer, and the Telly Award-winning series Random 1. The animated documentary he created sound design and surround mixing for, Freedom Dance, recently won a CINE Masters Award, and Lost In Woonsocket, a feature documentary was an official selection of the SXSW Film Festival in 2007. He holds a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is a member of ASCAP, TAXI, ITVA-DC and WIFV. Kevin is married and has 2 children, Aidan and Riley.
Dr. David R. McDuff, MD
Dr. David R. McDuff, MD (Project Consultant/Featured Individual) is a board certified addition psychiatrist who has been involved in training of health professionals at undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels for fifteen years. In 2001, he established an unique Addiction and Forensic Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Maryland’s largest hospital. Dr. McDuff has extensive experience training medical physicians to use brief motivational interventions to reduce alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use. In the late 1990s he established a comprehensive, on-site mental health and substance abuse service system in six urban settings. He is currently co-investigator on a five year grant entitled "Alcohol Abuse/Dependence in Trauma Patients." He is an expert in general and addiction psychiatry and has published over 70 articles, books, chapters, training manuals and abstracts.
Dan Bailey
Professor Dan Bailey (Executive Proiducer) received his M.F.A. degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bailey’s films and animations have received numerous national and international awards and have been included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, France. His work has been screened at the Whitney Museum, and Museum of Modern Art, and has been broadcast on HBO and PBS. He is currently working on a major research project of visualizing Washington, D.C. just before the British destroyed much of the city during the War of 1812. In 1998, Bailey received a Faculty Mentor Award from Phi Kappa Phi for teaching. In 2002, he founded the Visual Arts IRC Fellows program at University of Maryland, Baltimore County: which is a unique fellowship designed to recognize, reward and encourage students who have displayed exceptional artistic talent in computer art.
Cucillo Consad
Cucillo Consad (Assistant Photography) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1999, and began working as a camera operator and director of photography. Most recently, he served as DoP and technical advisor to the A&E original series, Random 1. In addition to building the visual look of the show, Cucillo also developed the post-production workflow for the series. In 2005, Random 1 utilized the largest Xsan network to be used on a television series. Working closely with Apple and Ramy Katrib, of DigitalFilm Tree, they designed a system that applied unproven technology not yet fully accepted by the industry to achieve the goal of making the show. Together, they ensured that Random 1 was delivered on time and under budget. Cucillo leverages traditional photographic technique with more modern intuition to strive for capturing sincerity in depicting the moment. He studies emerging technologies to constantly reinvent work flows. Cucillo played integral roles with the first two feature films to be shot in Maryland in High Definition. Working with both of the predominant formats, HDCam, and DVCProHD, he served as editor on the feature film When Betty Calls, and as HD Engineer for Euphoria. Cucillo has taught Final Cut Pro at the Baltimore School for the Arts, Photoworks LLC, the Creative alliance, and for the Maryland Institute College of Art's community arts partnership program, Baltimore Youth Television. In 2006, he directed The Date, a short film produced by Dobler's Pen Productions as part of the 48 Hour Film Project. Since then, Cucillo has directed several commercials, and other short form projects.
Molly Schrek
Armed with a business degree from Georgia Tech University, Schrek began as an intern for InspireOne Entertainment in Atlanta, Georgia. She quickly jumped into new business development. In 2003, Schrek represented the company at the National Association of Television Program Executives, pitching concepts to HBO, Oxygen, Lifetime, and Showtime. She then struck out on her own, providing PR services for speakers and authors and booking nationwide radio and television tours, including The View and Good Morning America. Schrek is a producer for A&E's Random 1, where here role is to shape the opportunities that will help strangers, giving them the faith to become participants in the difficult process of redirecting their lives.
Dr. Cynthia Phelps
(Project Consultant) Dr. Phelps' reseach focuses on the use of technology in teaching and learning. She combines her background in neuroscience and learning and memory with cognitive science, learning psycology and education, to create various technology-based learning environments. These include web games to teach kids about drugs, virtual patient software to train nursing students, and collaborative learning learning environments to encourage students to pursue careers in scientific research.
Dr. John Schild
Dr. John Schild (Project Consultant) is Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Perdue School of Engineering and Technology in Indianapolis. He has been involved with biomedical engineering for more than twenty years, while following his passion to understand more about how the nervous system encodes afferent information (sensory transduction), forms a response (central neural processing) and follows through with action (efferent control of the target organ). His academic and research training includes implantable systems development, clinical neurophysiology and cellular electrophysiology. Research focuses on neural control of the heart using patch clamp electrophysiology to study the electrical and chemical properties of cardiovascular sensory neurons, in addition to more traditional bioengineering methodologies. The overarching objective of these activities is to advance our understanding of how cardiovascular afferents reliably encode circulatory information such as blood pressure, heart rate, and myocardial condition in the presence of changing external factors such as chronic hypertension and coronary artery disease. Funding for these studies has come from The American Heart Association, The Whitaker Foundation, and The National Institutes of Health. In addition to serving as an advisory member, Dr. Schild makes available to Euphoria the tools and techniques traditionally used in cellular electrophysiological studies of the nervous system.
Dr. Anthony Tommasello
Dr. Tommasello (Project Consultant), a pharmacist, is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and Director of the Office of Substance Abuse Studies, which he founded. Working in the addiction field since 1973 he has advanced degrees in pharmacology, epidemiology, and policy sciences with specialization in addiction. His clinical practice involves supportive services for pharmacists impaired by substance abuse and chemical dependence. He directs clinical and evaluation research in addictions and has created educational programs for the lay public as well as pharmacists and other health and human service providers that have been used as national models. Current research projects include outreach to homeless substance abusers with HIV infection and mental illness, palliative care for end-of-life AIDS patients, tobacco use prevention and cessation, effective policies for impaired health professionals and prevention programming for teens. Research interests include substance abuse prevention and treatment including health professionals impairment, school based drug information programs, tobacco use prevention and cessation, treatment access for hard-to-reach populations, and addictions pharmacotherapy. Research skills include policy analysis, evaluation methodology, and study design.
Elizabeth Sheldon
Elizabeth Sheldon (Project Consultant) is Vice President of Lorber HT Digital where she is responsible for pioneering digital initiatives, overseeing content acquisitions and co-productions, and implementing online distribution strategies. Sheldon previously was Director of Acquisitions & Co-productions for Schlessinger Media where she licensed best-selling series from the BBC, Dorling Kindersley, and the National Film Board of Canada for digital as well as video distribution. Sheldon also worked as senior program acquisitions manager for Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Sheldon received a Fulbright scholarship to produce a film on the effect of reunification on East German women and has received three grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her film projects.
Nancy Walzog
Nancy Walzog (Project Consultant) is the President/Founder of Tapestry International. She oversees the strategic planning, development,production, and marketing of the company. Among her many production credits, Walzog Executive Produced the Academy Award®-winning documentary King Gimp and serves as the Executive Producer of the Emmy® Award-winning outstanding children’s series, Assignment Discovery. Walzog has 22 years of experience in the television industry. She holds an MBA in Management and Finance from Pace University and a BFA in Film and Television Production from NYU.
Stephanie St. John
Since working as Project Manager and Script Supervisor on Euphoria, Stephanie has moved to Northeast Wisconsin, where she continues to paint and draw regularly. Stephanie has recently worked as project manager and teacher on "Celebration of Life on the Lake", a community art project partially funded by the Wisconsin Arts Board. Additionally, she has been teaching classes in clay to adults and children. Stephanie is currently on the membership committee of ArtBeet, Inc., a local non-profit which set up to promote the arts. She plans to continue her career in all aspects of arts administration, including grant writing and project management.
Caroline Devereaux
Caroline Devereaux (Assistant Producer InfoCulture) graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2004 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts. The animated short she produced as a student at UMBC was exhibited at the Griffin International Film Festival and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Rising through the ranks of the entertainment industry, she has gone from production assistant in Miami to video editor in Alaska, to location manager in Washington, DC. She has worked in a variety of capacities for television, film, commercial and internet-based productions, motivated by a desire to bring about cultural change through positive social media. Devereaux is also a published illustrator and continues to work as a freelance artist in watercolor, oil, pencil and charcoal. As a passionate feminist, she continues to produce work that concentrates on improving the political, cultural and sexual status of women and girls.
Christina Nguyen Hung
Christina Nguyen Hung (Animation team) is an interdisciplinary artist who works with electronic, video and biological media. Hung’s work has been presented at numerous venues such as the exhibition A Knock at the Door at the Cooper Union for Advancement in Science and Art; Festival Intermediale in Mainz, Germany; St Mary's College of Maryland; Arizona State University's Institute for Studies in the Arts and the 2008 International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA). Her work may be found in the anthologies Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, and Domain Errors!: Cyberfeminist Practices. Hung’s work has received support from Clemson University, The University of Virginia, the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon, the Maryland State Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She is and a founding member of subRosa, a cyberfeminist art and research collective and is currently an Assistant Professor at Clemson University.
Paul Wallace
Born and raised in Baltimore, Wallace is a sculptor and a filmmaker. His art, over thirty works of video and sculptural installation, has been curated at commercial galleries and screened internationally. His filmmaking career began in 2004 with "The Euphoria Project" while interning for Lee Boot. During college he completed his first feature film in 2008, entitled "THE FACE," which is currently being screened at film festivals around the country. After graduating from Brown University in 2008 with a bachelors in semiotics, Wallace took up the role of assistant director on the newest installments of the "Port Huron Project," curated by Creative Time. He now lives in Los Angeles working full time as a writer, an artist and a filmmaker.