Virginia Tourism and the Virginia Film Office have asked filmmakers to capture the glory which is Virginia in a short 30-90 second video for Audience Awards Virginia is for Film Lovers Challenge.

The jury has been hand selected by Virginia Film Office and is made up of film industry writers, directors, and producers, all dedicated to celebrating all things Virginia. We’d love for you to meet them:

Colette Burson

Colette Burson is the co-creator and executive producer of the HBO television series HUNG, starring Thomas Jane, Jane Adams, and Anne Heche. Widely praised by critics, the New York Times described Hung as “the most topical fictional programming on television” in 2010.  The show ran for three seasons, during which time it was nominated for four Golden Globes and also a WGA award. As a writer, Colette recently completed the pilot Retired for Paramount Television.  She has also written original television pilots and episodes for Showtime, FX, NBC, and Canal+/Europa.   Her work as a director prior to Permanent includes Little Black Boot, starring Jane Lynch, which premiered at Sundance and won over ten national and international awards (including the Grand Prize from Planet Out and Best Short Film Prize from Logo Television).  Additional directing credits include COMING SOON starring Mia Farrow, as well as several episodes of HUNG  including the third season premiere, DON’T GIVE UP ON DETROIT.

Derrick Borte

Derrick Borte is best known for his work as a writer/director on the feature films The Joneses, London Town, and Dark Around The Stars.  His work has also expanded into the episodic and commercial world, where he has directed campaigns for Taco Bell, Jaguar, Barbasol, Betty Crocker, Afrin, and others, as well as over 50 episodes of television.

Jeff Wadlow

Director/Writer/Producer

Currently, Jeff Wadlow is directing Truth or Dare, a screenplay he wrote for Jason Blum and Universal Studios. Before that, he wrote and directed True Memoirs of an International Assassin, starring Kevin James and Andy Garcia, which was at the forefront of Netflix’s expansion into original movies. His preceding action comedy, Kick Ass 2, was named one of the ten best films of the year by Quentin Tarantino, who stated the movie demonstrated a “real auteur approach.”  While prepping that movie, Jeff developed and executive produced the worldwide hit, Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson, in addition to writing the feature film X-Men spin-off, X-Force for Fox and Ryan Reynolds.

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Jeff attended the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC where he conceived and directed his thesis film, tHE tOWeR oF BabBLe (narrated by Kevin Spacey), winning more than a dozen awards before taking the top prize in the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. Jeff used the million-dollar grant to make his first feature, Cry_Wolf, which was released by Universal Studios. His next feature, the action/drama Never Back Down, starring two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou, beat out the big-budget competition to win “Best Fight” at the MTV Movie Awards. In television, Jeff’s first pitch sold in a competitive situation to CBS and Warner Brothers with Joel Silver (The Matrix) producing, eventually going to pilot. He followed that with another pilot order from CBS for his character-based procedural starring Minnie Driver. Jeff went on to collaborate with Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Kerry Ehrin (Friday Night Lights) to help launch the Emmy-nominated series, Bates Motel, eventually working with Cuse again as a writer and producer on the final season of The Strain, created by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and Chuck Hogan (The Town). In addition to his film and TV work, Jeff has directed award-winning shorts starring acclaimed actors such as Meryl Streep and Danny DeVito.

For the last thirteen years, Jeff has returned to his hometown to lead The Adrenaline Film Project, a program he founded to help filmmakers of all ages, write, shoot, and screen a short film in the Virginia Film Festival in just 72 hours. Through the Adrenaline Film Project, Jeff has helped produce more than two hundred short films, personally mentoring over six hundred aspiring filmmakers.