Stephen Barnett
MA Media Producing Class of 2026
Hometown: New York, New York
Stephen Barnett is a highly educated indie filmmaker, as well as a recycled-materials carpentry craftsman and a mixed-media artist. He germinated with B/W darkroom photography shooting portraits and fashion, then moved to New York and shifted to fine-art while he studied acting and directing at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and then HB Studio’s advanced experimental workshop classes mentored by Michael Beckett. He has worked as a self-employed handyman, an interior designer, and then he focused on producing design-builds for clients utilizing recycled and new materials together for custom carpentry furniture and alike, which branched into personal mixed-media-structural-assemblage works of art he refers to as: Photography Sculptures. He’s also performed in local community theatre productions while playwriting, screenwriting, directing, and learning-by-doing almost every aspect of indie filmmaking throughout his twenty-one exploratory short film projects with no-to-low budgets and a few accolades along the way. Meanwhile, Stephen decided to earn a CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies in Theatre & Cinema from which he was awarded the life-experience credits for his work in the Photography Arts. He followed this with a CUNY Individualized Studies MA degree in Gender, Sexuality, and Cinema Theory, and then a second MA from the inaugural Media Producing degree program at NYU Tisch under the direction of David K. Irving. Presently, Stephen is in research and development for various feature film projects.
Why did you pursue the MA Media Producing?
I pursued this Media Producing MA to continue cultivating my professional growth and to further expand my opportunities as an indie filmmaker.
Please tell us about your real-world application of the learnings and skills you developed in the MA Media Producing program?
Among many things, the MA Media Producing degree program’s sequential order of courses ultimately provided the framework for creative-producing a professional and impactful media project prospectus and reel. Each course modality included a lecture, research, and discussion, as well as individual, crew, and case study assignments, which were designed to develop our understanding of the course’s role within the work of producing a project from concept through distribution. I viewed these weekly tasks as opportunities to push myself as a creative producer. For example, our course, Entertainment Business Law, instructed by Maria C. Miles Esq., included a weekly legal presentation from one of our pre-assigned crew about an actual entertainment-industry case we were to analyze using the concepts we’d be learning throughout. Our crew of four was scheduled to present during the last class. Rather than presenting the standard slide deck and reading the written scripts live, I pitched to our crew the idea of creating an Entertainment Business Law Newscast video. Given we all lived in different locations around the world, we would add an image of ourselves into our individual segment’s "location" image, then mix in our scripted pre-recorded dialog audio, SFX, and music. We would use our slide deck cards as cutaways to visually outline the information while our dialog elaborated on our segment’s details.
What are you working on now/what's coming up for you?
I am currently in research and development for a few varied stories, but there is one story in particular wherein I am very actively writing the script.