Visiting Professorship, Year 1

Ringling College Studio Labs panel: L-R, Dylan McDermott, Andy Armstrong, Terry Borst.

The academic year is coming to a close and that means I’m wrapping up my visiting professorship at Ringling College Art+Design’s Film department. I’m honored to have participated in the mentoring of a number of senior thesis films, along with senior thesis screenplays and one documentary. Additionally, I moderated a Ringling College Studio Labs panel featuring actor/director Dylan McDermott and legendary stunt coordinator Andy Armstrong, and racked up up a lot of frequent flyer miles ping-ponging between Florida and New Mexico.

Faculty colleague Damon Maulucci and I discovered we shared the identical fashion coordinator.

As the adjacent photo shows, there were moments of levity during the academic year, and perhaps as a consequence, the College has been kind enough to invite me back as Visiting Faculty next year. Since I know my way around Tampa International Airport pretty well by now, I’ve accepted. You can’t have too many frequent flyer miles.

Meanwhile, my feature film 2-WAY moves forward, and in case you haven’t already liked 2-WAY’s Facebook page … your ‘like’ would really be appreciated, as it helps us with potential investors and marketing opportunities. My co-producer and I have moved forward on fundraising, attachments, and distribution, and if all goes well, we’re hoping to shoot in the Fall. Another feature screenplay I’ve written is in “active development”, and I’ll be working on another feature over the summer.

Stay tuned…it should be an interesting rest-of-the-year…

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Heading into 2019…

If you connect with me via Facebook or LinkedIn, you already know that my independent feature film screenplay 2-WAY is headed towards production — targeting Fall 2019 if money and schedules all align.

I’m co-producing the film with partner Claudio Ruben, veteran producer and managing director at Garson Studios, which has been busier than ever hosting film/TV productions these past months. If you haven’t already followed 2-WAY on Facebook, now’s your chance. Our film’s also on Twitter and Instagram: @2waythemovie is our handle everywhere. Every follow helps us, as we continue to work on securing independent funding for the film (not surprisingly, film funding is not easy!).

I’m also headed into my second semester as Visiting Faculty in the Film Department of Ringling College of Art+Design in Florida. It’s been an honor being part of a department that The Hollywood Reporter ranked #15 in the nation, working with highly-motivated and creative undergraduates. It also means I rack up a lot of frequent flyer miles. 🙂

I’ve got another indie feature film screenplay (that I’m also producing) making the rounds of possible financing entities (this one’s still under wraps), and another couple of indie features in development with the hopes of moving them forward in 2019. Stay tuned — and I’ll let you know about any new developments on my professional website/blog here.

Joining Ringling College of Art+Design Faculty – F’18

Very happy to share the news that Ringling College of Art + Design has appointed me as full-time Visiting Faculty in Film, beginning Fall 2018.

This is a very exciting opportunity, as Ringling’s Film department has been ranked #16 in The Hollywood Reporter‘s latest scorecard of American film schools, and Film Head Brad Battersby was recently named by Variety as “mentor of the year.” Visiting artists to the program have included writer/director Kevin Smith (Clerks), actor Justin Long (dozens of screen credits), actress Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation), actor Dylan McDermott (dozens of screen credits), cinematographer Wally Pfister (Inception) and many more. (Just FYI, Ringling’s Computer Animation department ranks #2 in the country!)

One Office, Two Views

(Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ readers: click through to the original WordPress blog post so you can use the WordPress 360° photo viewer: you’ll be glad you did!)

This marks the wrap-up of my time at The Film School at Santa Fe University of Art and Design (which is closing — lock, stock and barrel — on June 30, 2018). I moved into this office in 2010, when hired as full-time screenwriting faculty for the University. Our high watermark — as a department — might have been in 2016 when we were named by trade publication Variety as one of the “entertainment schools on the move.”

Certainly that was our goal.

You can check out any time you like…

Because of course.

2-WAY — it’s everywhere!

Thanks so much to all of you who have already liked our 2-WAY Facebook page; it’s really appreciated! (And if you haven’t yet, this is the perfect time to click on the link and like/follow the page — or you can always search for @2waythemovie in Facebook, and find us.)

Dozens of likes can move us into hundreds of likes which can ultimately move us to thousands of likes. And this is actually really important, as it helps us in lining up territorial pre-sales, product placement, and crowdfunding (it’s 2018, and social media performance helps with everything). This is what independent feature films have to do to gain traction in a very crowded marketplace.

In the meantime, if you also have an Instagram account, we’d love to have you follow us there as well: again, you can search for @2waythemovie — or click on this handy link. While content will overlap between our Facebook&Twitter feeds and our Instagram feed, you’ll definitely find some unique content on Instagram, since we’re trying to communicate solely using perfectly square imagery.  🙂

In the coming days, we’ll let you know how we expect to intersect with New Mexico State University’s Creative Media Institute and Dona Ana Community College’s Creative Media Technology department — and there’ll be lots of other news as well!

View this post on Instagram

Introducing 2-WAY's screenwriter and executive producer Terry Borst. terryborst.com #filmnewmexico #filmlascruces #twowaythemovie (thanks @rgphoto505 [Rebeca Gonzalez] for the photo)

A post shared by 2-Way The Movie (@2waythemovie) on Apr 26, 2018 at 8:02am PDT

New Horizons

I’ve kept a very low profile online this past year, partly because I’ve still been employed full-time as a screenwriting professor at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, and partly because I’ve been working on several new projects that will gradually begin seeing the light of day in the months ahead.

Thus, I’m very excited to publicly unveil 2-WAY, a feature film screenplay of mine that I’m also exec-producing. As is usually the case these days, my partners and I will be documenting the development, pre-production and production journey of 2-WAY via the Web and social media, and we would love you to share the journey!

You can like 2-WAY‘s Facebook page here, keep tabs on 2-WAY‘s Twitter feed here, and check out 2-WAY‘s Instagram feed here. We’re easily findable using the handle @2waythemovie. And we encourage you to use the hashtag #twowaythemovie if you’re sharing any posts or information with friends (and we really encourage you to do this!).