theatre<\/a> professor Stephanie French for advice. French connected Manzi with Cathy Reinking, a Hollywood casting director who had an opening for an internship.<\/p>\n\u201cAt first it sounded crazy,\u201d Manzi said. \u201cI emailed Reinking who suggested that I visit Los Angeles and then, if I wanted to move, to let her know when I was coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following Reinking\u2019s suggestion, Manzi visited a cousin in the Los Angeles area and found a place she could call home. In the fall of 2012, she boarded a plane with her two suitcases to start her internship with Reinking.<\/p>\n
Through her internship, Manzi landed a lead role in the web series, The British Invasion, which examines how Hollywood casting practices seems to favor British actors over Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I look young, I found myself in a lot of high school graduation and prom scenes,\u201d she said. \u201cWorking through Central Casting is good once you establish a relationship with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking to expand her skills, Manzi began taking classes at the Groundlings, a legendary Hollywood improvisation and sketch comedy theatre. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved comedy and taking ESU\u2019s Stage and Comic Technique with Professor French really piqued my interest,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was my favorite class and the most difficult because it was about being yourself on stage \u2014 I grew a lot in that class.\u201d<\/p>\n
Auditioning for classes at the Groundlings was intimidating to Manzi but, with her theatre background, she enjoyed the small community of 12-15 people in a class that provided a lot of time to work on the stage. \u201cIt was an exciting team where people were supportive rather than competitive,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
Manzi made another important contact through a producing workshop. She meet Kelsey Snelling, a writer and filmmaker and a fellow graduate of Bangor Area High School. The two began working together on a short film that Snelling had written \u2014 Picked, a story of a first-grader\u2019s field trip to the local pumpkin patch to choose the \u201cright\u201d pumpkin.<\/p>\n
Snelling had previously worked with Hollow Tree Films, a Pocono-based production company, and the company agreed to produce the film. Brandon Taylor \u201912, became the film\u2019s executive producer and Melissa Sherry \u201912 became a co-producer.<\/p>\n
The producers did their planning and pre-production work every Monday through conference calls on Google Hangouts, Manzi explained.<\/p>\n
Picked was shot at True Blue Farm in Bangor, Pa., in September, and Manzi played the teacher in the film. The crowd-funded film will have its first screening for an invited audience Sunday, December 27 at 6:30 p.m. at Pocono Cinema and Cultural Center in East Stroudsburg.<\/p>\n
Working on the film has given Manzi a new goal: to learn more about working with the camera. \u201cThis is something that I need to explore so I can better understand the film process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Last November, Manzi took a huge step and joined SAG-AFTRA. \u201cI have been eligible for a while, but now is the right time to take the bigger leap,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actress who led the union orientation session talked about how she has been steadily working for years and has made a good living,\u201d Manzi added. \u201cI know that I\u2019m still at the beginning of my career and Los Angeles is where I want to make it all happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moving to Los Angeles wasn\u2019t something Jenell Manzi \u201909 ever thought she would do when she graduated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[74,20,22,58,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-esu-success-stories","category-facebook","category-slider","category-theater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13453"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14413,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13453\/revisions\/14413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}