New York Film Academy Producing alumnus Anthony Scordio won Best Web Series / New Media at the Los Angeles International Film Festival Awards for his pilot of the half hour comedy show, “Long Island Lights.” The pilot episode recently screened at the Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California. The show was also a semifinalist at the Los Angeles Cinefest and has high hopes as it continues it festival run.
“Long Island Lights“ is a half hour comedy about a group of misfits at an amateur production company on Long Island who are hungry to become rich and famous.
“This is a story about millennials trying to find their way in life and the real issues they deal with from romance and success to redefining who you are in this age of hyper connectivity — where you can feel small and disconnected,” said Scordio. “What they are really chasing after is validation in a world where the “LIKE” button hails king. We watch them fail over and over again, but the real success comes in the bonds that they form with one another.”
It features similar romantic story lines and co-worker drama like the popular TV series “The Office,” the goofy family dysfunction of Mitch Hurwitz’s “Arrested Development,” and the dark and often raunchy humor of the hilarious “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
“The series came about after I quit my job at an investment bank in my early 20’s and decided to pursue my passion in filmmaking,” says Scordio. “There were a lot of growing pains and ridiculous people I met along the way — many of whom were in the industry for the reasons of becoming rich and famous. So I thought it would be funny to highlight that pursuit in a comedic way, but have a theme of friends and family at the core.”
The NYFA grad attended the 1-Year Producing Program at the New York Film Academy’s New York location, where he created the pilot for the series as his thesis project.
“NYFA’s training was crucial in being prepared to create the pilot,” he says. “It laid the foundation of skills that were necessary in order to pull it off, especially because we had over 150 actors and 50 crew members working on the pilot. I wouldn’t have been able to manage that without the education NYFA provided. Also, several of my collaborators are people I met directly or indirectly through NYFA.”
Scordio now runs a Long Island based production company, Scordio Productions, Inc. Scordio and his team are currently in pre-production for a Jon Bon Jovi music video that shoots at the end of October.