Alec Cohen-Schisler

Alec Cohen-Schisler was born in Palo Alto, CA. He received a flip camera at the age of nine and created his initial YouTube channel, TheAlecman123. After retiring the channel and choosing to focus on serious filmmaking in 2013, he began on his current channel, Alecman123. He made several short films, then began submitting to film festivals. In 2014 his short "What if you Slept?" made it into Cinequest International Film Festival. In 2016 his short "We Real Cool" also made it into Cinequest, and received a Gold Key from Scholastic's Art and Writing National Competition. His other short "Brown Penny" made it into the San Francisco International Film Festival, as well as other smaller festivals. Alec also collaborated on "Metatmorphosis: Junior Year" (2017), a feature length film produced by James Franco. Having worked on it for over a year and a half in pre-production, Alec directed a large portion of the movie, and collaborated with fellow students to help with production. After, he lead the animation team to deliver 6 original animations for the film. The film premiered at Cinequest in 2016 and was one of the most viewed features. It followed up with a screening at Mill Valley Film Festival. Alec worked on a follow up to Metamorphosis, "The Fringe Class", a short film with overlapping characters, that also premiered at Mill Valley. Alec led pre-production for the short, creating decks, writing treatments, and getting funding for the film. As of 2018 Alec is a freshman at NYU's Tisch in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Telivision. He hopes to continue to write and direct.