Staff and Faculty

Program Creator/Director and Lead Instructor

Two-time Emmy-award winning composer/arranger Hummie Mann has collaborated with some of Hollywood's most celebrated directors in both theatrical and television films.  His motion pictures projects have ranged from Mel Brooks' “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and “Dracula, Dead and Loving It” to Peter Yates' “Year of the Comet”, the children’s film “Thomas and the Magic Railroad” to “Wooly Boys” starring Peter Fonda and Kris Kristofferson.  For television, he has scored projects for Simon Wincer (the miniseries “P.T. Barnum”), Jonathan Kaplan (the miniseries re-make of “In Cold Blood”), Norman Jewison (“Picture Windows – Soir Bleu”), Peter Bogdanovich (“The Rescuers: Tales of Courage - Two Women”), Joe Dante (“The Second Civil War” & “Masters of Horror: Homecoming”), Jim Abrahams (“First Do No Harm”) and Richard Friedenberg (“Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas”).

Mann is the creator and lead instructor of the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program which in 2011 became the music department of the Seattle Film Institute. He has taught film scoring seminars in Edinburgh, Copenhagen & Shanghai and ran a film composition workshop at the Dakhla Film Festival in Morocco (2010).  Variety Magazine listed him as a “Leader in Learning” in its 2010 Education Impact Report.  Currently he serves on the board of the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers (ASMAC) in Los Angeles.  He was awarded a full scholarship to pursue his DMA (Doctor of Music Arts) degree at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, which he completed in 2015.  His thesis “The Temporal and Rhythmic Effect of Musical Composition and Form when Scoring Dramatic Moving Picture” is being edited for inclusion in an educational textbook he is writing of film scoring techniques. 

Sammy Applegate

Program Assistant Director

Sammy Applegate is an award winning filmmaker and accomplished composer originally from Lawrence, Kansas. She earned a BA degree in English with a minor in film from the University of Kansas in 2007. In 2012 she became the first woman to earn a Masters of Music in Film Composition degree from the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program at the Seattle Film Institute. In 2014 she joined the program as Assistant Director and continues to help train and guide new generations of aspiring composers into the film, television, and video game industries.

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In addition to working with the program, Sammy also works under copyist Robert Puff of RPM Seattle Music Preparation.

Ryan Ike

Instructor: Digital Performer

Ryan Ike is a two-time BAFTA nominated composer and sound designer, with work spanning games like West of Loathing, Gunpoint, and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, as well as short film and advertising. When not working on audio, he is passionate about public speaking with a focus on helping audio professionals, and freelancers in general, further their careers in the game industry in a healthy and balanced manner.

Sue Ennis

Instructor: Songwriting for Film

Sue is Seattle-based songwriter. She has co-written more than 70 songs for Heart, (30 million records sold and 2013 inductees in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame). Hits include “Dog & Butterfly,” “Straight On,” and “Even It Up.” She has co-written songs for feature films including The Golden Child starring Eddie Murphy and Thomas and The Magic Railroad, and her hobby band, The Lovemongers, appeared on the soundtrack of Singles. Sue scored and wrote the songs for “Art Dog,” a stage musical produced at The Seattle Children’s Theatre (2014). She teaches Music Business, Career Development and Songwriting at Shoreline Community College. She also teaches "Songwriting for Film" for the Seattle Film Institute.  Sue serves the PNW chapter as a national trustee on the board of the Recording Academy (“The Grammys”) and serves on the national Committee for Advocacy for the Recording Academy. Currently, she is developing a jukebox musical with a nationally known Broadway producer and Tony-winning director, for which she is writing the book.

Janice Findley

Instructor: Language of Film & Film Music History

Janice Findley produces and directs experimental narrative film and live stage work. She has had retrospective showings of her films at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC (where her work is part of the permanent collection), and screenings at the Guggenheim, NYC, Asia Society, NYC, and at The National Archives in Washington, D.C among others. Her work has been broadcast on Public Television throughout the U.S. and television in Canada. She has been awarded fellowships and grants for her films from the American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters, Artist Trust, Western States Arts and all local arts commissions. Findley’s live-theater productions have been awarded Seattle Times Footlight awards and nominations from Theatre of Puget Sound’s prestigious Gregory Awards.

Findley was the co-founder/curator of the adventurous, long-running Seattle series, “New Film/New City” and curated film programs for the Seattle Art Museum, the Olympia Film Festival and The International Festival of Films By Women Directors (Seattle, WA) and most recently Beauty, Brains and Know-How: Screwball Comedy in the Glamour Agefor the Pickford Film Center (Bellingham, WA) and regularly introduces and provides context for the Paramount Theater’s Silent Movie Mondays in Seattle.

Doug Zangar