Benjamin Pluenneke

Benjamin Pluenneke began his career freelancing on low budget features in the 1990s, eventually landing his first full-time job on Walker, Texas Ranger as a production assistant. He continued freelancing on features in Dallas, Las Vegas and Los Angeles until being accepted to The American Film Institute Conservatory.

He was a script reader and development intern for producer Don Murphy during Transformers and Shoot 'Em Up, then for producer Ilya Salkind of Superman 1-3. Pluenneke was a Writers Guild of America (WGA) Caucus member from 2009-2018 and is currently a member of the University of Film & Video Association (UFVA). He spoke at the 2023 conference on New Media: “Podcasting Radio Dramas from Comic books in the Public Domain.”  He experienced the Writer's Strike of 2007 and worked for more than three years in reality television as a logger on The Biggest Loser and story editor on The Fashion Show for Bravo TV.

He began teaching screenwriting in 2011, both online and in the classroom. He taught film production as an Audio Video Production Instructor in secondary education for over eight years.  He completed his M.F.A. in screenwriting at the American Film Institute Conservatory and got his B.A. in Radio-TV-Film studying cinematography in 16mm film at UNT with a minor in marketing.