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Stephen Kopels, Director of Education
 Stephen
has been a working filmmaker and television director for the
past thirty-five years. His career started in 1968 as a combat
photographer in Vietnam, shooting pictures for The United States
Army journal Stars and Stripes, The New York Times, Newsweek,
and other major publications. Upon completing his tour of duty,
Stephen returned to college and attended Brooks Institute of
Photography in Santa Barbara, California, where he earned a Bachelor's
degree in Filmmaking.
For the next twelve years, Stephen worked
for PBS as a senior producer/director. During his time with PBS,
Stephen created hundreds of documentaries and live television
shows that won him numerous national and international awards
(the New York International Film Festival, the Gabriel Awards,
and the San Francisco International Film Festival to name a few)
and such honors as being named American representative at the
Rockefeller International Independent Film Symposium in Venice,
Italy and receiving two Peabody nominations.
In 1985, Stephen became a partner with
Imagemaker Productions in Nashville, Tennessee. During the next
ten years, he created dozens of commercials, music videos, corporate
films, and documentaries.
In 1995, Stephen moved to San Francisco,
where he worked as an independent producer/director for many
high-profile corporations, including Levi Strauss, Sun Microsystems,
Oracle, Federal Express, Bank of America, Westinghouse, DuPont,
Texas Instruments, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Recently, Stephen produced and directed
three one-hour segments for a thirteen-part series titled Religions
of the World hosted by Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley.
As a way of sharing his experience with
up-and-coming filmmakers, Stephen has been an adjunct teacher
and administrator in film and video for twelve years, beginning
at Tennessee State University and Middle Tennessee State University
and most recently Associate Course Director at Ex´pression
College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, California. At Ex´pression
College, Stephen helped develop, administer and teach in the
Media Sound and Visual Arts Program, as well as co-direct the
Summer Digital Filmmaking class.
Stephen has continued to produce and
direct digital films, most recently a documentary for the thirtieth
anniversary of the San Francisco-based Progress Foundation and
two long-form music-performance DVD's for Grammy Award-winning
musicians Ozomatli and The Sons of Champlin. |
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Jeremiah Birnbaum is the Co-Founder and CEO of the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking. A native New Yorker, Jeremiah has worked as a producer, editor, director and educator in film and video for over nineteen years. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Film and Philosophy from Wesleyan University and attended the filmmaking program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.