A film, television, and theatre director, Weill's feature films include Girlfriends, made independently and sold to Warner Bros (currently streaming on the Criterion Channel); It's My Turn for Columbia Pictures; and The Other Half of the Sky, A China Memoir, with Shirley MacLaine (Academy Award Nomination). Weill’s TV work includes, among others, Girls (HBO), thirty something (Emmy Award), My So-Called Life, and Sesame Street. She directs theatre, mostly new plays, both regionally and in New York City, where she also mentors young playwrights. She has taught film directing for many years at University of Southern California and California Institute of the Arts, TV directing at Columbia University School of the Arts and The New School, as well as guest teaching at Harvard where she was an undergraduate. She is the third woman to have been admitted to the Academy of Arts and Sciences as a director. SLC, 2019-
Undergraduate Courses 2019-2020
Filmmaking and Moving Image Arts
Directing the Scene for Film and TV: The Process
Intermediate , Small seminar—Fall
Prior experience with filmmaking and/or film classes is required.
This course is a hands-on introduction to directing narrative in film and television. The classes will consist of a discussion with clips on an aspect of directing, followed by exercises with simple, open scenes to be shot by students in class the same week. Among the topics that we’ll explore are subtext, staging, directing the actor, creating identification with a character, camera (shots and movement), creating a visual language, subjectivity, and directorial POV. The class is a directing class with a focus on scene work rather than a filmmaking class in which one makes a short film. In addition to the in-class exercises mentioned above, students will be required to break down the script of a two-character scene, then direct it in class having cast and rehearsed it ahead of time. Students will then shoot and edit that scene outside of class and present it to the class toward the end of the semester. Additionally, there will be reading and viewing assignments, as well as a thorough analysis of a scene from an existing film—exploring the directorial choices that make the scene work. Conference includes the work on the scene that you will shoot, as well as the scene that you will analyze, as well as questions that come up about directing narrative.