Finding Your Persons
A Conversation with Filmmakers About Casting
In Finding Your Persons, The Storyteller Session meets with the filmmaking team behind a project to discuss their process find the cast that give their vision life.
OUR GUESTS
Writer/Director/Producer Felicia Pride
&
Producers Regina Hoyles & Amber Brown
of
LOOK BACK IT
LOGLINE: A forty-something single mother gets her groove back with a little assistance from her teenage daughter.
FELICIA PRIDE
Felicia Pride is a TV writer / producer and an award-winning filmmaker. She wrote on Ava DuVernay's QUEEN SUGAR and was most recently a producer on GREY’S ANATOMY. She’s currently developing shows with Amazon, Netflix, and FX. In film, she’s the writer and executive producer of REALLY LOVE, produced by MACRO, which debuted on Netflix and became a Top Ten Movie on the platform. And she’s sold features to Universal, Sony, and AGC Studios. She made her directorial debut with tender, a short film which aired on STARZ, and she is currently on the festival circuit with LOOK BACK AT IT, a proof of concept for her directorial feature debut by the same name. She founded and runs HONEY CHILE, a production company catering to Black women 40+ and is the co-host of their NAACP-nominated podcast Chile, Please.
Felicia was a Film Independent Screenwriting Lab Fellow and a graduate of NBC's Writers on the Verge program as a comedy writer. She started her writing career nearly twenty years ago as an entertainment journalist before going on to write several books, including the essay collection, The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip-Hop’s Greatest Songs. Prior to transitioning to screenwriting, she worked as a film distribution exec and an impact producer. Felicia holds an M.A. in writing from Emerson College and runs The Create Daily, a resource for underrepresented storytellers that she founded in 2012.
REGINA HOYLES
Regina Hoyles is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and actor who got her start in the film and TV industry as early as nine years old. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she received her BFA in Drama and minored in the Business of Entertainment. She is the founder of her boutique production company, RLH Productions through which she produces the works of emerging and established Black artists in addition to her own projects across film, TV, and digital.
Regina created and starred in NAPS, an original comedy web series which screened at festivals such as the NYC Webfest and NYU's Fusion Film Festival. Her first short film ADULLAM which she wrote, produced, directed, and starred in premiered as an official selection in the 2020 Bentonville Film Festival and is now airing on REVOLT TV’s anthology series, “Short and Fresh”. Regina wrote, produced, directed, and starred in her first short film entitled ADULLAM which premiered as an official selection at the Bentonville Film Festival and is now airing on REVOLT TV’s anthology series, “Short and Fresh”. The film was also awarded for "Best Screenplay" at the 2022 inaugural Black Girls Rock! Film Fest, Best Black Lens Film at the 2020 Sidewalk Film Festival, Best Sci-Fi Film at the 2022 AfroComiCon Film Festival and more. She also produced the short films tender and Look Back At It directed by Felicia Pride as well as the short film Welcome Home directed by Jo Rochelle which is currently in post-production. As an actor she can be seen featured on shows such as THE MARVELOUS MS. MAISEL (Amazon), THE CHI (Showtime), ALL RISE (OWN), and 9-1-1: LONE STAR (FOX). She is currently a TV writer for a new animated Disney series.
AMBER BROWN
Amber Brown is a fiction novelist and screenwriter. Hailing from a small town in New Jersey, she graduated from Rider University where she studied Communications/Journalism and sat on the editorial staff for the On Fire!! Literary Journal, as well as completing multiple semesters abroad in London. Following her degree, she pursued a career in fashion and spent five years in NYC working her way up from intern to executive assistant to then managing her own popular fashion + lifestyle blog. Most recently she was a talent agent at Central Artists. Her true passion lies in telling sexy, fun stories that blend suspense and cultural commentary. Her debut thriller novel with HarperCollins, SOMEONE HAD TO DO IT, is available anywhere books are sold. She is currently represented by Raquelle David of Lit Entertainment, Jessica Faust of Bookends Literary and Hope Watson of UTA.
ALL TIMES POSTED AS EASTERN STANDARD TIME (EST)