Tom Schatz, Executive Director

Tom Schatz oversees the development of UTFI’s program devoted to training students in narrative and digital filmmaking, and the actual production of feature-length commercial films (in partnership with UTFI’s commercial counterpart, Burnt Orange Productions).

Dr. Schatz is also Warner Regents Professor (and former Chairman) of the Radio-Television-Film Department at the University of Texas. He has written four books about Hollywood films and filmmaking, including Hollywood Genres, The Genius of the System, and most recently Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s. His writing on film also has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and journals, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Premiere, The Nation, Film Comment, and Cineaste. He is currently writing a book on MCA-Universal with Thom Mount, former President of Universal Pictures.

Bryan Sebok, DVD Producer / Academic Coordinator

Bryan Sebok serves as the creative coordinator and producer of all DVD content for Burnt Orange Productions/UTFI films. He has produced and directed several promotional shorts for the Institute in addition to behind-the-scenes featurettes relating to The Quiet, The Cassidy Kids, and Homo Erectus.

Bryan completed his PhD in the Radio-Television-Film program in 2007 and holds a Master’s degree from Emory University and a Bachelor’s from North Carolina State University. Bryan's work at the Institute compliments his dissertation research on DVD Industrial Structures and Practices. Over the past four years, Bryan has worked with dozens of UT students at the Institute as well as hundreds more on campus while teaching Narrative Strategies in Film and Television, serving as Coordinating Editor for The Velvet Light Trap and FLOW, and founding UT's new student film society "The Film Loop." He has received numerous awards, including being selected as the sole Austin representative to participate in the prestigious Chancellor's Council event this past spring.

In addition to serving as the Academic Coordinator for the Film Institute, Bryan also teaches in the RTF department at The University of Texas. His Spring 2008 courses include "Convergent Hollywood," and "Producing Trailers for Online Markets," the latter sponsored by The Walt Disney Co.

Alex Smith, Creative Director

ALEX SMITH is the Creative Director of the University of Texas Film
Institute and has been teaching Screenwriting and Directing at the
University of Texas at Austin for the past four years. He is a prize-winning
filmmaker, screenwriter and author of short fiction. He, along with his twin
brother Andrew, co-wrote and co-directed the Indie Spirit Nominated feature
film, The Slaughter Rule, starring Ryan Gosling, David Morse, and Amy Adams.
He is currently writing the pilot for an hour long crime drama set in the
modern-day west for the F/X Network, and has been hired by Framestore Films
to adapt the Irish novel Faerie Wars to the big screen. He was recently
hired by Fox Searchlight to adapt the graphic novel Son of the Gun written
by the legendary cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Alex has written
feature-length scripts for Columbia Pictures, HBO, ESPN Films, and Disney.
He has written screenplays for Terrance Malick, Lars Von Trier and James
Schamus. He was a Screenwriting/Directing Fellow at the Sundance Institute
in 1998 and a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas from 1993-1996.
Prior to that, Alex spent four years working as a Camera Assistant, Set
Dresser, Boom Operator and Production Assistant on a variety of feature
films, including A River Runs Through It, Little Man Tate and Raising Cain.

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