Auditions show you a different version of your story…
Katherine Vondy is a Los Angeles-based writer and director working in film, theater, and literature.
She is the recipient of the Davey Foundation Theatre Grant for her play The Fermi Paradox, and The Broken Heart of Gnocchi Bolognese, her award-winning short film, has screened at festivals worldwide.
Her plays have been developed with the Salt Lake Acting Company, The Athena Project, The Blank, Paper Wing Theatre Company, Campfire Theatre Festival, and The Vagrancy (where she currently serves as playwriting group moderator).
Her prose and poetry appears widely in literary journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Queen’s Ferry Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net.
Kat received her BA in English and Music from Amherst College and her MFA in Film and Television Production from USC. Read about her creative adventures on her website and follow her on Twitter here.
In this conversation Kat and I talk:
Shooting on a Sony PD150 in her first year at USC.
The value of limitations in filmmaking.
Thinking through shots.
Were classmates at USC more collaborative or more competitive?
The most helpful class at USC…
Why directors should take an acting class.
The job of a director is to capture “authentic human performance.”
Auditions show you a different version of your story…
The essential components to adapting a story to film.
The worst thing to do in storytelling is bore the audience.
The impact of surprise on storytelling.
The “popcorn scares” in Spielberg’s Jaws.
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood
“The taking away of a payoff can also be a payoff.”
Starting not with story or plot but a moment.
The value of our unconscious mind.
Juxtaposing sadness and humor.
Traumedy.
Is USC worth the price?
71. Storytelling with USC Grad Kat Vondy