Movers & Shakers
MEMBER NEWS
OUR WOMAN IN HOLLYWOOD—WRITER’S WORK EARNS L.A. ACCOLADES Nattalia Lea, P.Eng. , has been busy since we brought news of her debut short film, Spikes at Her Elbow, in the winter 2016 edition of The PEG . The film has been picked up for distribution by the Winnipeg Film Group, and there’s a lot more going on in a life that’s getting glitzy. In 2017, Ms. Lea won a third-place prize at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards for a feature animation screenplay she wrote called Joe Rat. She was also hard at work on pre-development for two television series—Ghetto Moms, a sitcom about three single moms who chase get-rich-quick schemes to save money for their children, and Lady with the Iron Ring, a 1970s drama about the guts and glory of a female engineer in the oilpatch. Ms. Lea, who graduated from the University of British Columbia’s bioresource engineering program in 1978, says it’s not unusual to find people with an engineering background in Hollywood. She met an actor who repairs his own car and has a background in mechanical engineering. The film world is challenging, the Calgary resident says, but in a way that’s what aligns it with engineering. There’s the need to secure financing, to scope out a design, to find proper locations, to be accountable, to provide a detailed budget, to build a team that meshes, and to communicate well. “In film and engineering, it doesn’t matter what your background is—if you work hard and do good work, you have a chance of getting noticed.” WALKING THE RED CARPET Nattalia Lea, P.Eng., has always had a writing bent—a fact well- known at The PEG, given that she used to freelance for the maga- zine. These days, Ms. Lea is an award-winning screenwriter and independent filmmaker.
-photo courtesy Nattalia Lea
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