Victoria Vertuga is a Los Angeles and Atlanta based actress turned writer/director/producer/lover of slashes. Sick of playing endless variations of "hot blonde," "dumb blonde" and "hot dumb blonde" she ventured into writing. 

Her pilot scripts "Tithes" and "The Other City" have been contenders at Austin Film Festival, The Scriptlab, and Screencraft's TV Pilot Contests. Her webseries "DisGraced" premiered at the Women's Comedy Film Festival in spring of 2021 and has since played at over 35 festivals garnering over 20 award nominations and 10 wins, including multiple best actress and best comedy wins. 

She has two feature length horror films coming out in 2022, "Lexi" and "Cold Blows the Wind" which she worked on in front of and behind the camera. Outside of the biz, she is part of the non-profit Angel City Pitbulls and dog mom to three rescues of her own. 

Resources we covered in the show:

CROWDFUNDING WEBSITES: 

www.seedandspark.com
www.indiegogo.com

FINANCING WEBSITES: 

www.wefunder.com 

WRITING RESOURCES 

www.coverfly.com

Below are some links to see Victoria's work and get in touch:

DisGraced: 

www.youtube.com/c/DisGracedTheSeries

Lexi: 

www.vimeo.com/ondemand/lexi

Website: 

www.victoriavertuga.com

Socials:

www.instagram.com/victoriavertuga

www.twitter/com/victoriavertuga

www.facebook.com/victoriavertuga

Yoo welcome to episode 4 of pitch the script podcast. If you’re new to the show we meet with writers, directors, producers and actors from the entertainment space to learn what it takes to actually get a show or movie made. This week we have writer and friend, Cortez Cubillas. We talk about his early days as a writer, breaking into the entertainment space, what the day to day of a writer looks like and of course getting producers to look at a script. 

For episode 3 I had the pleasure of bringing on Krista Bradley who is a straight hustler. Krista is a writer, producer, actress and so much more.  Krista Bradley is an American actress, writer, and content creator. Born into a military family (her father a late U.S. pilot), Krista spent her childhood moving with her parents and four younger siblings. Though always dubbed "the new girl," she was never shy and showed strength in the performing arts from a young age and would go on to earn multiple acting and writing awards throughout her school years, ultimately leading to college scholarship opportunities.

After college, Krista returned to acting - booking several commercial spots, along with leading roles in independent films. In 2018, Krista worked as a second assistant director and acted in the faith based film, The Penitent Thief, starring Kevin Sorbo. Later that year she was cast as rodeo star Carly Rivers in the Netflix film Walk. Ride. Rodeo. 

She currently runs her own production company, Spiral Out Media, where she’s in development on her next project, Wonderland Cave - her latest award winning screenplay that’s currently ranked in the top 10% of all scripts on Coverfly’s platform and is scheduled to start filming early Fall 2022 after winning the Fayetteville Film Festival grand prize pitching the script last November. Krista is also slated to executive produce, direct, and star in the film.

She’s since gone on to her directorial debut Eighty Two Days. Krista is extremely active in the FilmFest circuit and has won awards for her screenplay, Wonderland Cave which we’ll dive into in the episode. She shares a ton of advice on navigating film festivals, creating content to pitch and how to pitch a script. Let’s get into it. 

I was fortunate enough to meet El in Denver and he's been a friend since. El has so much passion for storytelling and wrote his first screenplay which touches on growing up with an emotionally detached father. The vulnerability he shows in his screenplay is courageous.

We discuss how he's pitched the script to producers, where he finds producers to pitch to and the feedback he's received so far.

Krista Gano shares some gems on this one. She has over 25 years of experience in the industry. She started her career producing and acting in the feature Chicks, Man and then spent 5 years as an assistant to Dustin Hoffman. 

In 2002 she became the executive director for The Groundlings. And she’s since gone on to start Firefly Rev Studios and co-wrote features that she is actively pitching. Krista is a HUGE help to actors like myself that know nothing about the business side of acting.

On this episode we talk about the first steps you should take after finishing a screenplay, how to research producers to pitch your script to, the importance of knowing your audience and more.

In 2020, Krista partnered with SeriesFest’s Pitch-A-Thon to mentor artists as they take their projects out for the all important pitch. If you're interested in submitting your script to pitch to SeriesFest the first 10 submissions get 10% off with code "SFS8PitchTheScript10"
You can apply here - https://www.seriesfest.com/

Working Artist Group - https://www.workingartistgroup.com
Firefly Rev Studios - https://www.fireflyrev.com/