Carolyn Macartney - Producer, Writer, Director
Carolyn Macartney made her first film with a Double 8mm film camera that she found in her granny's attic to accompany electronic music that she had composed. Having a background in fine art and experimental filmmaking, Carolyn avoids formula and instead is motivated by originality and visual language, working in hybrids of narrative, experimental, and documentary genres. She is interested in looking beyond surfaces, striving to find rawness and meaning beneath.
Carolyn’s award winning films, including “The Ebbing”, “The Dreaded Beard” and “There Goes the View”, have enjoyed success in screenings and festivals around the world including Rooftop Films New York, Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival, Lausanne Underground Film Festival, Deep Ellum Film Festival and have won prizes at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival, Houston Worldfest and other Juried screenings. Her films have also been featured in domestic and international touring film festivals and purchased by collectors.
Carolyn has fourteen years of experience as a Director of Photography. She has shot four feature length narrative films as well as numerous music videos, spots, promos, short films and documentaries. Work for which she was the cinematographer has aired on Showtime, VH1, MTV and PBS and has been screened at festivals around the world including SXSW, Los Angeles Film Festival, London International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Margaret Meade International Film Festival, plus screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and limited theatrical runs in New York City.
Carolyn’s award-winning still photography has been published and exhibited in the US and Europe. Among other honors, Carolyn has received an award for music composition, a DAAD scholarship to study painting in Berlin, Germany, and most recently a Kodak Faculty Scholars Award. The Kodak Award is toward production on her current film project, Wanda the Wonderful. The feature length film is a documentary/narrative hybrid about Carolyn’s Grandmother Wanda, a Wild West sharpshooter. Also in support of this project, Carolyn has received a Texas Filmmaker’s Grant and generous grants from Meadows School of the Arts and the University Research Council, both of Southern Methodist University.
Kimby Caplan - Director of Photography
Caplan received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado where she made half a dozen award-winning experimental 16mm films. After a skiing hiatus, she moved to Dallas, Texas, to pursue a Masters degree in Film Production at Southern Methodist University. Her thesis film “Listen”, a personal documentary about what it means to be Deaf, received First Place at the Black Maria Film Festival, a Silver Remi Award from the Houston Worldfest Film Festival, a 2005 Student Academy Award and was qualified to be nominated for an Academy Award. Shortly after this, Caplan attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, graduating as Valedictorian, MFA in Cinematography, in 2007. Her thesis film, as director of photography, “Song of David”, has been featured in film festivals internationally and recently won Best Student Film at the USA Film Festival. She continues her busy schedule as a Cinematographer with numerous projects in various stages of development and production. Kimby goes skiing whenever she can.
Janna Hampton – Associate Producer
Janna is also Wanda's Granddaughter and the filmmaker's cousin. She is a rancher and horse trainer who lives on her family's cattle and sheep ranch near Ten Sleep, Wyoming. As a Wyoming native, Janna is instrumental in assisting with the production of the Wanda the Wonderfulfilm project. She has vast connections to the people and places of the Wyoming community and knows the history of the place. As a fellow relative of Wanda's, her knowledge of the lore and mythology of Wanda helps our project in practical and thematic considerations. Janna is also a visual artist, an accomplished painter. She has received numerous commissions and has sold her work both locally and nationally.
Mark A. Menza – Composer/Arranger
Composer Mark Menza has been writing, arranging and producing music for over fifteen years. Relocating to Dallas from the northeast with an undergraduate music degree from SUNY Fredonia, jazz guitarist Mark Menza began playing, teaching, and writing music. MENZA:MUSIC was founded in 1994 with a focus on scoring to picture. Today MENZA:MUSIC offers composing, sound design, audio post production, music supervision, and audio production for all types of media. His work has been heard in animated films and series, television commercials and other broadcast media, a spectrum of narrative and documentary films, interactive and web media, and more. Mark's awards include numerous regional Telly Awards, NY Film Festival, Houston Film Festival, Fort Worth Addy, Omni Award, Gracie Award, Silver Quill Award, Katie Awards, and more.