Mid-September 2024

Wendy Kram is a producer and one of the industry’s leading script consultants. She is the founder of L.A. For Hire, an international consulting company that specializes in acquiring IP, developing scripts, packaging them with talent and directors and matching them with production companies, studios, streaming providers, networks and cable companies.

Wendy currently serves as an executive and producing partner at Reuben Cannon Productions, overseeing development for features and televisions series in partnership with DISNEY +, Oprah Winfrey’s HARPO FILMS, TRIBECA, and FOREST WHITAKER’S SIGNIFICANT PICTURES, among others.  She is also producing a new feature film written by Rocaberti alumni, Carrie Wachob.

Previously, Wendy served as Vice President for UK’s media conglomerate Granada Entertainment, where she oversaw development and international co-productions. She was an executive for production companies based at Sony, Disney and Universal, developing and producing projects that received Humanitas, NAACP, WGA, and Golden Globe Awards, starring actors such as Sissy Spacek, Helen Mirren, Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes, to name a few. Past credits include MAD MONEY directed by Oscar-winning writer/director Callie Khouri (THELMA & LOUISE) and SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN SCANDAL for CBS, which won the WGA award for outstanding writing in a miniseries.

Wendy also manages a small group of screenwriters and filmmakers, including John W. Richardson, who wrote the action blockbuster NON-STOP for Universal, which starred Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore and Lupita Nyong’o.

Wendy graduated Cum Laude from Columbia University in New York City. She has been a guest speaker and conducted film and television workshops at Harvard University, USC School of Cinematic Arts, UCLA and NYU Tisch. Creative Screenwriting Magazine ranks Wendy as one of the industry’s top script consultants.

Peter Lydon successfully moves between commercials and high-profile TV drama, blending great performances with a cinematic eye.

In the TV world he has directed classics like SHAMELESS, TEACHERS, SECRET DIARY OF A CALL GIRL, VINCENT AND POIROT. He won a Royal Television Society Award for his BBC1 period drama series GARROW'S LAW.

As a commercials director he has clocked up work for brands like Carlsberg, Ikea, Sky, VW, DHL and Mercedes. In this arena he’s directed iconic names like Al Pacino, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Caine, Danny Trejo, Joanna Lumley, Jose Mourinho and Scarlet Johansson.

Peter cut his directing teeth as a documentary maker with award winning films for BBC ARENA and THE SOUTH BANK SHOW. His three-part biography of comedy legend Peter Sellers was BAFTA nominated and won several major awards in the US including Gold at The Chicago Television Festival.

Peter is also a prolific cartoonist, but that’s another story…

Sabrina Parra is the founder of The Scriptster. She has helped hundreds of writers on their quest to craft the perfect screenplay. Sabrina is a professional script consultant with over five years of experience as a film development executive. She honed her skills as the former Vice President of Di Novi Pictures, a production company that has grossed over $1 billion worldwide and brought you films including LITTLE WOMEN, CRAZY STUPID LOVE and A WALK TO REMEMBER. She most recently was on the producing team for Apple+/A24 film THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE.

By working closely with studios like Amazon, Apple, A24, and Netflix, Sabrina has spent her career developing projects from inception and guiding writers through the studio process. Her experience provides invaluable insight into what financiers are looking for when they read your screenplay. She values creative integrity and imagination of story above all. She believes there is nothing stronger than a film or series that allow its viewer to catapult themselves into the perspective of another.

Prior to co-founding the management/production company Fictional Entity in January 2017, Chris Deckard spent over seven years working with and representing talent at major agencies such as ICM Partners and WME. He has worked closely with traditional and new media buyers to find and develop content for domestic and international audiences. In addition to helping cast and package numerous features and series, he has evaluated thousands of scripts for actors and directors. Chris graduated from Cornell University and earned his J.D. from Notre Dame Law School.

Fictional Entity’s clients have been named to The Black List, The Hit List, The Young & Hungry List, The Blood List and been lauded by the PAGE Awards, the International Emmys’ Peter Ustinov Award for exceptional international television writing and placed as finalists in The Heath Ledger Scholarship and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship The Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Awards, the AWG, ADG, SPA, and AACTA. Clients have written, directed, starred, and produced in numerous formats, including features, TV, virtual reality, and podcasts, independently and for companies like Netflix, NBCUniversal, Legendary, Marvel, Fremantle, SyFy, the CW, Warner Bros., Amazon, Blumhouse, Comedy Central, the ABC Australia, Foxtel, TruTV, Super Deluxe, Hallmark, CBS, Facebook, E!, and MSNBC.

Chris has advised clients through multiple successful series pilot and pitch sales. In 2019, Fictional Entity clients have: staffed on Netflix and Amazon series; directed features and high-budget shorts; entered option and shopping agreements with high-profile producers; and have premiered feature films and shorts at festivals around the world.

Having worked on over seventy feature films, covering all genres from big action movies such as TERMINATOR 2, THE ROCK, and XXX and studio classics such as GHOST, THE MASK OF ZORRO, and THE FAST AND FURIOUS, Parra’s success came from smaller, more independent films, such as ELECTION, SIDEWAYS, THE DESCENDANTS, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, THE WAY WAY BACK, NEBRASKA, AMERICAN HUSTLE, and JOY.

Parra has collaborated both as an Assistant Director and now as a Producer, with renowned directors such as Alexander Payne, Peter Yates, Oliver Stone, James Cameron, Michael Bay, Rob Cohen, Martin Campbell, Jay Roach, and David O’Russell to name a few.

After Graduating from San Diego State University, with a degree in Film and Theatre, he began his career working as a Production Assistant with directors such as James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola on their films THE TERMINATOR and PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED.

A member of the Directors’ Guild and Producers’ Guild of America, Parra has been steadily producing a number of films for various companies as well as developing his own projects. Fluent in Spanish, he currently resides in Deer Valley, Utah.

George Parra is attending this retreat as a Roving Mentor.