Carolina Meza

As a child, I was convinced I was going to be an artist, one that dealt with paint, and charcoals, and a multitude of different colored pencils, but then I suddenly wrote the shortest of short stories on a plain notepad at the age of eleven, and that was the catalyst towards the inevitable choice of my current career.

Though I was insistent to settle on majoring in English Literature at the University of California, Riverside, become a teacher, of sorts, and continue writing on the side as a hobby, I threw all common sense aside and changed my major at the end of my third year to become a part of the UCR Theater, Film, and Digital Production department with a concentration in Screenwriting.

The majority of my classes centered around creating screenplays, critiquing them, polishing them - and on top of all of that? Movies to study, to admire, to learn from. On the side, however, I kept up with creative writing, from Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry, all of which have helped to mold the style I currently thrive in.

Not only that, but being in a department that not only dealt with a concentration in both screenwriting and playwriting, I was often on set working with the sound department, learning the basics of boom mics and cameras with mentors experienced in the field. I am not a professional by any means in the post production of films, but the experiences of scheduling time slots for certain scenes, finding actors and locations, perfecting take after take exposed me to the meticulous, time consuming life of film production.

Now, well after graduation, I've continued to write with a BA in Theater, Film, and Digital Production with a concentration in Screenwriting.