Alumni Awarded College Television Award and Daytime Emmy Nominations
Film alumni have recently been awarded high television accolades.
Writer/director Zack Morrison ‘18 and producer Taylor Ortega ‘18 won the 39th College Television Award for comedy series for their comedy Everything's Fine: A Panic Attack in D Major, a musical comedy about a woman at the onset of her quarter-life crisis and her existential journey through the various stages of anxiety in song and dance.
Zack Morrison is a screenwriter and director from East Brunswick, New Jersey. His recognitions include the Campus Moviefest Lifetime Achievement Award and he was featured on MTV College Filmmakers. Morrison hosts the YouTube series We Have A Show—a crowdsourced variety show featuring filmmakers, comedians, and musicians from across the internet. Zack has previously worked at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live.
Taylor Ortega currently works at Nickelodeon as a Coordinator in the Live Action Development and Production Department. While attending Columbia University, Taylor worked in the audience department for the TV programs The View (Disney/ABC) and Kevin Can Wait (CBS). Additionally, Ortega has had an array of internships and assistant work at various development and production companies located in Los Angeles, New York City, and London.
The 2019 winners were presented awards on March 16th. Watch Zack and Taylor's acceptance speech here.
In other exciting television news, Ducktales: The Shadow War, by writer and creator Francisco Angones '11, was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Special Class Animated Program for the hour-long Season 1 finale. In the finale, Magica De Spell is close to exacting revenge on Scrooge, so the family races against time to plan a dangerous rescue mission to save Scrooge and the city.
Francisco Angones previously served as story editor on Disney XD’s Wander Over Yonder, for which he earned an Emmy nomination in 2015. His other credits include Men at Work, Disney Channel’s Austin & Alley and the independent comedy film Mutual Friends. He began his career writing on-air promos for Comedy Central. Along with Columbia, Angones is an alumnus of the Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop and the Comedy Central summer school program.
The Who Was? Show, a Netflix Original, edited by alumnus Nathan Floody '12, was also nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Children’s or Family Viewing Series. The show is a live-action sketch comedy and history show based on the best-selling Who Was...? series of books, where fresh voices bring some of the most famous names in history to life.
Nathan Floody is known for his work on Jon Glaser Loves Gear (2016), The Last O.G. (2018) and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (2018). He holds a BA from Princeton University in English literature and is a 2018 BlueCat Screenplay Competition Feature Finalist for his script Winter Quarters.
The 71st Emmy Award ceremony will take place September 22, 2019.