Sara Caldwell
Sara Caldwell (Sara Coover Caldwell, born Sara Chapin Coover in 1961 in New York City) is an American author and screenwriter/filmmaker. She was founder and producer/writer of Amphion Productions from 1991 to 2006 and is currently a co-producer and writer for House of Gorey Productions.
The daughter of writer Robert Coover, and Spanish needlepoint artist Pilar Sans Coover, Sara Caldwell lived in many different locations when growing up, both small towns and large cities in Guatemala, Spain, England, and various parts of the United States. She attended the progressive boarding school, Dartington Hall School, in Totnes, England. Returning to America at the age of 17, she pursued a bachelor's degree in Communications from the University of Iowa, where she was a member of the undergraduate Iowa Writers Workshop. Sara graduated in 1984 and moved to Chicago, Illinois. Here she worked in the audio-visual department of the American Hospital Association from 1985 to 1989, initially as a production assistant then as a writer/producer of live satellite teleconferences.
Whilst in Chicago, she became involved with an inner city tutoring program, resulting in the production of her first documentary, Cabrini Green... what you don't see which aired on the Chicago PBS station. She eventually became an original founder and board director for the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
Sara moved to Washington, DC in 1989 to work for WORLDNET, a division of USIA. Here, she was a writer/producer for live interactive broadcasts to Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East. She worked at Motion Masters in Charleston, WV for six months before returning to Chicago in 1991 to form Amphion Productions. She then worked as a freelance writer/producer on hundreds of projects and was a 1997 competition winner for the Chicago/Illinois Screenplay Contest. She moved her company to Los Angeles in 1998 and has since written three books on screenwriting/film production topics. She is also a professor of film/screenwriting courses at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California, a technical writer for Boston Scientific, and a frequent workshop leader. In 2010 she partnered with Walter Gorey (video technician at Sony Pictures) to form House of Gorey Productions. Their first short film, Shadow Man, shot by cinematographer, John Lazear, is in post-production.
She lives with her two children in Valencia, California.
Books
- (with Maria-Eve Kielson) So You Want To Be A Screenwriter (New York: Allworth Press, 2000).
- Jump-start your Awesome Film Company (New York: Allworth Press, 2005).
- Splatter Flicks: How to Make Low-Budget Horror Films (New York: Allworth Press, 2006).
External links
- Website of House of Gorey Productions
- Review of 'So You Want To Be A Screenwriter' on Bellaonline
- Interview with Sara Caldwell on her book 'Splatter Flicks'
- Review of 'Splatter Flicks'