Who's Who

Maggie Baird, Screenwriter/Actress

Maggie Baird grew up in a small town in Western Colorado, where she was encouraged by her family to pursue her love of writing, songwriting and acting. Although she kept her songwriting close to her heart chose to study theatre and dance at the University of Utah. Soon after she began her theatrical career based in New York City performing on Broadway and Off Broadway as well as traveling around the country appearing in Regional Theatres from Alaska to Florida. She spent a year as Dr. Taylor Baldwin on As the World Turns and followed that up with nine months on the road touring in The Heidi Chronicles. Following that tour she moved to Los Angeles where she began acting in Television and Film where she has appeared as oddball comedic characters as well as futuristic murderers and hard-done-by victims. As a voice over artist, she can be heard on cartoons, video games (most recently in Mass Effect 2 and 3) and in television commercials. In Los Angeles, she also became a Main Company member of the Nationally known comedy and improvisational theatre company The Groundlings writing and performing with Will Ferrell, Jennifer Coolidge and Mindy Sterling as well as countless other equally talented people. It was as a member of the Groundlings that her passion for songwriting was revitalized, creating musical numbers both for her solo work and for the company. She recorded her first CD “My Father’s Daughter” in 2001 as a gift to her father who was terminally ill. Her second CD “We Sail” recorded over a two year period squeezed in around parenting her two children and working as an actor, received critical acclaim as “immeasurably intimate lyrics, resonating with emotion”. In 2010 she began performing around Los Angeles in Open Mic nights and clubs with the Performer’s Collective, a group of women (and a couple of men) who supported and encouraged each other in their musical ambitions. It was in that group that she met Nasso and they began writing together. Life Inside Out is the story that came to be as a confluence of Maggie’s love of music, writing, acting and most of all having been a beloved daughter and a deeply in-love mother of two splendid children.

Lori Nasso, Screenwriter/Actress

Born in Ottawa, Canada Nasso became an actress at Second City in Ontario, Canada in her late twenties. It was there that she was scouted to audition for Saturday Night Live and ultimately got hired as a writer for the show. After four years with SNL Nasso moved to Los Angeles where she co-executive produced a Sketch comedy show on the Oxygen Network, landed a recurring role on NBC pilot Thick and Thin (which never aired) and did voiceover work on a variety of television shows including King of the Hill, The Goode Family and the current revival of Beavis and Butthead. After taking time off to raise her two children, Nasso just got hired for her first full-time writing job in eleven years as a writer for Nickelodeon starting this summer. She is also currently performing in a very funny, two person show about marriage at various comedy theatres around Los Angeles.

Jill D'Agnenica, Director

Jill D'Agnenica is a visual artist, filmmaker, and mother of two young girls. She edited and co-produced the independent films Nothing Special, The Cuckold, and Ricky and Melinda. Her recent television credits include JJ Abrams Undercovers for Warner Bros./NBC, Switched at Birth for ABC Family, and Hollywood Heights for Nickelodeon. She recently cut Magic Boys starring Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones and provided additional editing on Habana Eva for director Fina Torres. In addition, she has edited, produced, and directed several documentaries and art, music and performance videos. Jill received her MFA in visual arts from Claremont Graduate University and a BA, Magna Cum Laude, in Cultural and Intellectual History from UCLA.

Explorations of community and interconnection are recurring themes in Jill's visual art work, made manifest at various stages of the art making process, from concept and fabrication to the final presentation of the piece. For her most famous piece, "(look for) Angels" she engaged the help of over 150 volunteers to place 4687 small magenta angels throughout the entire city of Los Angeles as a unifying symbol in the aftermath of the LA Riots. In the past several years, Jill has created several permanent pieces of public art around Southern California, including work for two Los Angeles Public Libraries, and a commercial building in the Los Angles Fashion District. She is currently creating a large-scale commemorative mural for educator Jaime Escalante for Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. With recent pieces, she plays with allegory and transformation, turning herself and others into someone/something else—to manifest a larger truth (or at least a parallel possibility) of who we are and who we aspire to be. Her current ongoing project, "Bad Mother" documents with photographs and video her inattention and failings as a parent while her children run around and do whatever they please with their time, space, and bodies.

Grants and awards for her art and movies include three Kickstarter Project Grants, an Artist in Community Grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, an Artist's Project Grant from LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), and The Los Angeles Downtown Breakfast Club’s Rose Award for Public Art. Her artwork has been reviewed in numerous art and mainstream publications. Her project “(look for) Angels” was the subject of a documentary, “Los Angeles” by Paul Martines and Bill Fletcher and was featured in several local and national television programs, news stories, and documentaries in the US and Great Britain.

Jill is super excited to be working on this film, the product of several years' of discussions with her dear friend Maggie Baird, which always started with the statement, "We give our creativity in the service of others all the time. Let's make a movie for ourselves."

Tessa Bell, Producer

Tessa Bell began her career in media at CBS Sixty Minutes and the CBS Evening News.  After working her way up the production ladder, her research was the basis for the first on-air story about the devastating impact of chlorofluorocarbons on the environment, a story which greatly influenced their elimination in the United States.  Her career was cut short by the arrival of her daughter, and the choice–unusual at the time –not to return to CBS, but craft an independent career in film and television.

Immediately two opportunities presented themselves: creating the FYI Column for the brand new Premiere Magazine, and producing films for Bell Atlantic.   This work led to the building of Infinity Films & Video, Inc. a film and video company producing for Fortune 500 companies, and finding the time to create more inspiring entertainment in the form of short children’s films.

In the mid-nineties, Infinity Films turned a corner and began producing live off Broadway cabaret shows until Sept 11, 2001, when New York’s theatrical industry came to a screeching halt. A brief detour into real estate and construction, during which time Tessa built a steel erection company, was blessedly shortened by the decision to move to Los Angeles and resurrect her film and tv talents.  Moving to LA has brought tremendous opportunities, including producing the annual Women In Film International Short Film Festival, a feature film by Jean Veber Side Effects, two public service campaigns, and a short film starring Melissa Leo This Is The Story of Ted and Alice.  She is producing several feature films at the moment under the Wild Flower Films banner.

Guido Frenzel, Director of Photography

Guido was born and raised in Munich, Germany and started his career in Europe before moving to Los Angeles in 1994, where he received a scholarship to attend the AFI Cinematography program.

As a cinematographer he has been active in features (The Awakening), commercials and music videos (HP, Honda, Anti-Smoking PSA, Flaming Lips at the Bowl, etc.) as well as award-winning shorts (Flight of Stone, Rant). His travels for documentary work have brought him to China, Brazil, Peru and all over Europe.

In the world of unscripted Television he worked as the Director of Photography on numerous successful reality shows, such as the Fashion Show (Bravo), Denise Richards- It’s Complicated (E!), Confessions of a Teen Idol (VH1), Clash of the Choirs (NBC), How to Look Good Naked (Lifetime), Farmer Wants a Wife (CW), Murder (Spike TV), NBC’s Three Wishes and Simple Life. He also operated on many TV-shows, such as the Emmy-nominated TLC-series Junkyard Wars, America’s Got Talent (NBC), The Voice (NBC), American Idol (FOX) and recently on the feature Thor (Marvel Studios) and the episodic series Parks & Recreation (NBC) and Dollhouse (FOX).

Leading up to his current position as a Director of Photography, Guido had the opportunity to work as a High Speed Camera Operator on award-winning commercials, music videos and features, such as Behind Enemy Lines, Star Wars-Episode One, Armageddon, Starship Troopers, Batman & Robin, Dante’s Peak, Star Trek VIII, Space Jam, etc.

Guido continues to enjoy the mix of more immediate and fast-paced work in documentaries and unscripted television ,as well as more planned and stylized work on commercials and features. In the end both kinds of filmmaking are all about telling a good story .