baltimore next media web festival
November 2nd - 5th, 2023
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Elena has been working in the film industry in the mid-Atlantic area of the U.S.
since the late 1980s. As a student in Goucher College, she was an intern in wardrobe on the set of the original film, Hairspray written and directed by Baltimore Director John Waters in 1987. In the summer of 1990, Elena was Kevin Bacon's personal assistant during the filming of "He Said, She Said".
In 1992 Elena joined the union I.A.T.S.E. Local 487 and started working in the craft services department for films and commercials. She was the key (head) of the craft services on most of John Waters films including Pecker, Cecil B. Demented, and A Dirty Shame. She was also key all five seasons of the hit HBO Series, The Wire and has worked in the craft services department during all six seasons of the Netflix series, House of Cards.
In 1998 she created her first web series, Jamie's Way. She did casting locally and in the tri-state area, hiring talented teens as well as an experienced and novice adult cast, filming four episodes. According to Internet Drama and Mystery 1996-2014 - a text book by Vincent Terrace Jamie's Way is first SCRIPTED web series. Back in 1998-2001, publicity sites like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Vimeo etc. did not existed. Still, the teen cast has their share of fans, and the site had 20,000 hits a day. Elena updated many photo galleries of the cast at work, which helped the hits between episodes.
In 2008, after The Wire ended, the work on film sets in the mid-Atlantic area became almost non-existent. Elena went back to New Media and created three more web series - Life After Lisa (based off the script she had started writing back in college), Chasing Brianna, another scripted show and Click On This, a lifestyle interview show.
Two webisodes of Life After Lisa were filmed in the Fall of 2008 and the web series became one of the first 11 web serials to be a New Media Signatory for the Writers Guild East. Life After Lisa set in the 1980s was a script Elena had been working on since the 1980s.
Elena started filming webisodes of Click On This at the premiere of the movie Respire, and at the Baltimore Women's Film Festival in 2009. Click On This was originally created as a side project to feature sponsors of Life After Lisa. But then the individual webisodes took on a life of their own, and Click soon blossomed into its own separate entity. Click on This is now eight years old with over 400 released video webisodes with many more on the way!
Elena also created the Baltimore Screenwriters Coffee Club, a club that meets once a month at The Creative Alliance where screenwriters go to have their work read out loud, and to get advice from their peers. The club now has over 950 members in it.
Elena is also the Founder / Producer of the BALTIMORE NEXT MEDIA WEB FEST, a festival dedicating to discovering and supporting the very best of international New Media, including VR projects, Web Series, Youtube Channels, Podcasts, and Social Media. The 1st year of the festival was on November 4th - 5th, 2017 at the Creative Alliance. The 2nd year was extended to 4 days - November 1-4th, 2018. The third year will also be 4 days long, plus take place on Halloween at the Landmark Theater!! Also the Baltimore Museum of Art's Meyerhoff Theater for the 2nd and 3rd day, and the Hyatt Place Hotel's ballroom for the 4th day!! The 3rd year dates will be Oct 31st thru Nov 3rd, 2019.
Here's a Podcast with Elena about the making of Life After Lisa for Script Magazine
http://www.scriptmag.com/features/podcast-elena-moscatts-life-after-lisa
** An article about Life After Lisa:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-10-23/features/0910220043_1_web-series-web-production-film
** An article about Life After Lisa on TubeFilter: http://www.tubefilter.com/2008/12/29/life-after-the-wire-includes-lisa/
An article on Elena's first web series, Jamie's Way!! This article came out in 2000: (Jamie's Way was created in 1998 and filmed up until 2002)
http://www.gazette.net/gazette_archive/2000/200046/poolesville/news/33029-1.html
Other Links to Elena around the web