December 2010 Contest

Dr. Linda Seger created and defined the job of script consultant in 1981, when she began her script consulting business based on a system for analyzing scripts that she developed as part of her doctoral dissertation. She has consulted on over 2,000 projects, including over fifty produced feature films. Her clients have included TriStar Pictures, MGM/UA, Peter Jackson, Guber-Peters Entertainment, Ray Bradbury, William Kelley, Tony Bill, Dave Bell, Charles Fries Entertainment, Linda Lavin, Suzanne De Passe, and others.

She is the author of nine books on screenwriting and filmmaking: Making a Good Script Great, Creating Unforgettable Characters, The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film, From Script to Screen: The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking (with co-author Edward Jay Whetmore), When Women Call the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film, Making a Good Writer Great, Advanced Screenwriting: Raising your Writing to the Academy Award Level, And the Best Screenplay Goes to: Learning from the Winners: Sideways, Shakespeare in Love, Crash, and Writing Subtext: What Lies Beneath to be published in June 2011.

Dr. Seger has given seminars for ABC, CBS, NBC, Disney Animation, Turner Network Television, Embassy Television, Matinee Productions, RAI Television in Rome, ZDF Television in Germany, the MacGyver Series, the Television and Motion Picture Academies, the DGA, WGA, AFI, UCLA, and USC. She has also lectured and consulted internationally in thirty-two different countries.

Los Angeles native Mike Werb received his undergraduate degrees from Stanford. He put his costly education to use by joining a new wave garage band that never left the garage. Turning to writing, he began a climb up the well-greased Hollywood ladder by entering the UCLA Master's program in screenwriting, and has since worked for every major studio.

Mike's big break was writing the screenplay for the hit comedy The Mask. He also co-wrote and co-produced (with Michael Colleary) the action-thriller Face/Off, directed by John Woo. Other screenwriting credits include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Curious George, and the family comedy Firehouse Dog. Werb and Colleary also worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger on Collateral Damage.

Mike is the creator/executive producer of Unnatural History—a live action-adventure series for Warner Horizon and the Cartoon Network which launched in June 2010.

He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Writers Guild of America, and is a visiting professor at UCLA's graduate school of Theater, Film and Television.