Sorry about that, my performance on the interview is making me a little too neurotic right now. Often resulting in not making any sense to most people
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You can pick one out of the five movies, one of the two TV shows, and one of the five authors to discuss. No more than that, for they will move on right after they are done hearing you out. You can pick the ones you want to talk about, but they give you hints of which one in the list the would rather hear about. In my head I knew I was going to talk about Her for my movie option, but I actually wanted to go with Community for my TV show but they seemed a lot more interested in hearing me talk about my second show, The Twilight Show. Which is actually quite ok, because you want to keep them interested as much as possible.
Twenty minutes is quite short, and twenty minutes is all you get. These people on the panel are EXTREMELY professional and they know how to keep themselves on track. They are not afraid to stop you when they are ready to move on to the next step. My interview was a total of 29:53 minutes, but that's because I engaged them in questions once the interview was done. I did not get to talk about myself much, but I guess that's okay because I already did that on my actual application. The American producer question is the first one, but sadly I sort of messed it up. I spend a week doing research on Thomas Tull (CEO of Legendary), and was prepared to talk about his vision and some of the movies he has acted as producer on, which is only two right now (Pacific Rim, and 42).
So heads up, MAKE sure you know that producer's work inside out. I messed mine because I admire Tull not only as a producer but a general businessman in entertainment. The assistant dean was quick to point out that he is more of a financier (or exec producer) than an actual producer. They din't give me time to explain that regardless if he has actually produced only two released movies (one I saw, the other one I have yet to see, which they pointed out as a flaw). I knew that, and I wanted to explain that he has a bunch of movies in the pipeline right now where he is actually a producer on (Crimson Peak, Godzilla, Interstellar) . But again, they cut me off before I could explain myself and moved on to the next question :S.
I hope this helps...
PS: I was feeling pretty good about the interview after I was done with it. Days after, I am really starting to believe I messed it up in a couple ways, and could have gone A LOT better if I was there in person and given more time..
