On the Run JOSH and BENNY SAFDIE Craft an Exhilarating and Emotional New York Thriller

Home , Alex Gibney, Amy Seimetz

SUMMER 2017 The Latest Innovations from NAB and a Visit to Douglas Trumbull's Magi Pod a publication of

FILM SCHOOLS IN A TIME OF DISRUPTIVE CHANGE

DAVID LOWERY'S A GHOST STORY FILMMAKER MAGAZINE VOLUME 25,#4

EDGAR WRIGHT'S BABY DRIVER

MATTHEW HEINEMAN'S CITY OF GHOSTS

On the Run JOSH AND BENNY SAFDIE craft an exhilarating and emotional New York thriller

SummerSUM 2017, 17 Vol. 25, #4 with GOOD TIME. $7.95$5.95 CDN U.S. / $5.95 $7.95 US Canada

7 25274 93694 6 FilmmakerMagazine.com EDITOR’S LETTER

As a number of our filmmaker readers wrap up classes and prepare to head into their senior year, whether high school or college, the question of fi lm school arises. What’s the utility of fi lm school in a time in which the very notion of fi lm — or, perhaps, work within the fi lm industry — is changing so much? This issue, Filmmaker brings you a suite of articles looking at a number of issues facing fi lm schools — and, by extension, their students — today. Calum Marsh considers a number of broad trends a ecting schools in this time of disruption, from needing to adapt to television to educating students in VR and other new technologies. In his Industry Beat column, Anthony Kaufman looks at the role student debt plays in fi lm students’ post-graduate lives. Whitney Mallett examines the call for diversity on college campuses and in fi lm school curricula. Carmine Grimaldi wonders whether new critical studies programs arising on various campuses might provide a support structure for the next wave of experimental fi lmmaking. Robert Greene writes about starting a new program with the journalism school at Mizzou. And I talk to a number of working independent fi lmmakers about the ways in which they balance realism and optimism when imparting their real-world wisdom to students. And, for less theoretical discussions on fi lm schools, check out Filmmaker’s fi lm school guide, appearing online in mid-June.

The other big topic found in this issue is camera and projection technology. David Leitner returns from NAB, where there weren’t as many new model cameras as in past years. No matter — his report covers all the new tweaks and updates as well as ponders the path toward full-frame cine-sensors. He also talks about high frame rate cinema and the march toward 8K — and, gulp, 16K! Leitner references Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk in his article while, in the following article, Sam May visits director and visual e ects maestro Douglas Trumbull to demo his own new high frame rate system, Magi. Intended to be viewed in theaters called “pods,” the Magi system is a di erent approach to Lee’s, even though, on the surface, the specs seem similar.

On the cover this issue I’m thrilled to have interviewed two of my favorite New York directors, Josh and Benny Safdie. Josh fi rst appeared in these pages in our 2008 25 New Faces — a bumper year that also included Barry Jenkins. Shortly thereafter Benny joined Josh behind the camera, and they last fi gured here in my interview with them about their New York addict-drama, Heaven Knows What. Their latest, Good Time, is a stunning leap, a pulse-pounding brother/buddy thriller starring Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie that is a worthy successor to fi lms ranging from Dog Day Afternoon to After Hours. Another of my favorite fi lms of the year is David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, a minimalist fable that’s wise beyond its running time. Amy Seimetz takes a break from working on season two of The Girlfriend Experience to talk with Lowery about this deeply thoughtful and bold fi lm. Jim Hemphill interviews Edgar Wright about the tuneful sure-to-be-hit Baby Driver, while Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker converse with Matthew Heineman about his wrenching follow up to Cartel Land, City of Ghosts, about a team of citizen journalists combating ISIS.

There’s much more of course, so enjoy this issue and your summer. And, remember, our publication schedule has changed, so our fall issue will hit your mailboxes (and browser windows) in early September. It’s our 100th issue, by the way, and it will be a special one.

See you next issue. Best,

Scott Macaulay Editor-in-Chief

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 1 CONTENTS FILMMAKER • Summer 2017 • Volume 25 • Issue Number 4

30 John Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.fi lmmakermagazine.com 26 Tel: (212) 465-8200 • Fax: (212) 465-8525 ALL DAY AND A NIGHT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Scott Macaulay New York independent fi lmmakers JOSH and BENNY SAFDIE return with the unex- scott@fi lmmakermagazine.com pectedly emotional pulp thriller Good Time. With intense, high-wire performances by Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie as brother bank robbers, and indelible supporting MANAGING EDITOR Vadim Rizov turns from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Buddy Duress, the fi lm suggests a cross between vadim@fi lmmakermagazine.com Dog Day Afternoon and Rain Man but set in the Safdies’s poetically scuzzed-out modern New York. SCOTT MACAULAY talks with the fi lmmaker duo. SENIOR EDITOR Peter Bowen 32 peter@fi lmmakermagazine.com ART DIRECTOR TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE Diane Ferrera DAVID LOWERY’s fourth feature, A Ghost Story, is an austerely made, achingly beautiful COPY EDITOR rumination on love, mortality and our tiny yet meaningful place in an entropic world. Jennifer Dome King Starring CASEY AFFLECK and ROONEY MARA, it’s a poltergeist tale that feels personal — and it’s shot in 4:3! AMY SEIMETZ talks with writer/director Lowery. FACT CHECKER/PROOFREADER Soheil Rezayazdi 36 CONSULTING DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING Jeryll Adler SPINNING OUT [email protected] Crime, coming-of-age and car culture all collide in EDGAR WRIGHT’s tuneful and ex- CONTRIBUTING EDITORS citing Baby Driver. A tale of a young getaway driver who can only work with a choice Brandon Harris playlist, the fi lm expands one of the writer/director’s early music videos into an acceler- Anthony Kaufman ated piece of hardboiled pop. JIM HEMPHILL interviews Wright. David Leitner Ray Pride Nicholas Rombes Damon Smith FILM SCHOOL Alicia Van Couvering Lauren Wissot 44 FILM SCHOOL IN A TIME OF DISRUPTION Cable TV dramas, streaming originals, VR and, oh, yes, movies — students entering fi lm schools today CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS have ambitions shaped by our rapidly changing entertainment landscape. How are fi lm Henny Garfunkel • Richard Koek schools adapting? Calum Marsh reports. WEBMASTER Michael Medaglia 48 BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF LANGUAGE Carmine Grimaldi SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER surveys an emerging kind of academic program that could support the next wave of subscriptions@fi lmmakermagazine.com experimental fi lmmaking. PRINTER RR Donnelley 52 VR.EDU Randy Astle on the increasing role virtual, augmented and mixed reality are playing on today’s campuses. NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTION Disticor, Inc. (905) 619-6969 54 CHECK YOUR CANON Whitney Mallett on the FILMMAKER (ISSN 1063-8954) is manufactured and printed in the push for greater diversity in fi lm school studies. SUMMER 2017 a publication of United States. FILMMAKER welcomes unsolicited articles but reserves complete editorial control over all submitted material. All articles, let- ters or reviews represent the opinion of the authors and do not nec-

56 MAKING OF THE MURRAY HUSTLE FILMMAKER MAGAZINE VOLUME 25,#4 essarily refl ect the opinions of the publisher or editors. All materials become the property of FILMMAKER and cannot be returned unless Documentary fi lmmaker Robert Greene on building a new a stamped, self-addressed envelope is included. FILMMAKER is listed fi lmmaking curriculum at the University of Missouri School in the Film Literature Index. FILMMAKER is published four times a year. The title FILMMAKER and “The Magazine of Independent Film” and of Journalism. logotype are registered trademarks and service marks. Copyright 2016 FILMMAKER Magazine. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied by any means, electronic or mechanical, including pho- 56 PEDAGOGICAL PRAXIS Scott Macaulay on tocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system

SummerSUM 2017, 17 Vol. 25, #4 $7.95$5.95 CDN U.S. / $5.95 $7.95 US Canada without the express written permission of the publisher. Newsstand: the work/teaching balance of ﬁ ve independent ﬁ lmmakers 72

7 25274 93694 6 $5.95 U.S./$7.95 Canada; Subscription: $18.00 U.S./$20.00 Cana- FilmmakerMagazine.com who teach independent ﬁ lm. da/$40.00 Foreign. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to COVER JOSH AND BENNY SAFDIE subscriptions@ﬁ lmmakermagazine.com PHOTO BY RICHARD KOEK

2 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 CONTENTS FILMMAKER • Summer 2017 • Volume 25 • Issue Number 4 Independent Filmmaker Project 30 John Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 LINE ITEMS Tel: 212-465-8200 56 FROM BUSTER KEATON TO 8K David Leitner surveys the latest innova- Email: [email protected] tions out of NAB and ponders the continuum of cinematic image capture. Website: www.ifp.org

60 A NEW KIND OF MAGIC Sam May visits with legendary director and visual e§ ects artist Douglas Trumbull and immerses himself into a new kind of high- BOARD OF DIRECTORS frame-rate cinema. Anthony Bregman CHAIRMAN James Janowitz COLUMNS VICE-CHAIRMAN 10 FEST CIRCUIT San Francisco, Visions du Réel and Big Ears. John Schmidt TREASURER Anthony Kaufman surveys the landscape of escalating stu- Sharon Solomon 14 INDUSTRY BEAT SECRETARY dent debt, discovering what both students and schools can do to lessen its impact on Anthony Bregman students’ post-university careers in ﬁ lm. Gerry Byrne Mark D’Arcy Philipp Engelhorn 16 EXTRA CURRICULAR Holly Willis learns Joan Scheckel’s “The Technique.” Barry Feirstein James Janowitz 18 THINGS DPs DON’T TALK ABOUT Sean Porter on the value of working Sheila Nevins Katherine Oliver in commercial cinematography. Marc Schiller John Schmidt 20 TIME & TEMPO Nicholas Rombes on the ideological contradictions of today’s Sharon Solomon Yancey Strickler Hollywood genre ﬁ lms. Christine Vachon Lance Weiler 22 LOAD & PLAY Reissues of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Chabrol’s Ophélia and Bresson’s L’Argent. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Joana Vicente

24 SUPER 8 Eight Things to Keep You in the Know. After debuting with a program in the 1979 New York Film Festival, the nonprofit IFP has evolved into the nation’s The new Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro is the REPORTS oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers, and also the premier advocate for them. Since its world’s ﬁ rst digital ﬁ lm camera with the features 6 Women’s genre festivals and the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. start, IFP has supported the production of 7,000 films and provided resources to more than 20,000 filmmakers and controls of a high performance broadcast camera! ETC — voices that otherwise might not have been heard. For additional information: www.ifp.org. 80 PARTING SHOT Naomi Ackie

The new URSA Mini Pro is a true digital fi lm camera with a 4.6K image sensor, Interchangeable Lens Mounts CONTRIBUTORS 15 stops of dynamic range and a wide color gamut that delivers amazingly rich With URSA Mini Pro, you get a single camera that works with virtually all RANDY ASTLE (pg. 52) is a New York-based filmmaker, writer, and film programmer for the annual Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City. His current video series is skin tones, natural color response and incredible detail. You also get built in professional lenses! You can work with high quality EF photographic lenses, at redux52.com. BARBARA BRUNI (pg. 8) has been working in the film industry for over a decade in various capacities both in Europe and the US, and has previously ND fi lters, dual C-Fast and SD card recorders, an interchangeable lens mount large PL cinema lenses, and even B4 HD broadcast lenses, all with the same contributed to Senses of Cinema and Vogue.it. RICKY D’AMBROSE (pg. 23) is a writer and filmmaker in New York. His most recent film,Spiral Jetty, premiered at New and more! URSA Mini Pro works in both fi lm and video modes, so it’s perfect camera! URSA Mini Pro comes with an EF mount and you can purchase optional Directors/New Films. He is preparing his first feature. STEVE DOLLAR (pg. 10) is a Florida-based journalist and programmer who contributes toThe Los Angeles Times, for digital fi lm or broadcast use all while delivering better image quality! PL and B4 lens mounts separately. The Washington Post, Billboard ARTnews and other publications. ROBERT GREENE (pg. 56) is an award winning filmmaker and writer. His films includeKate Plays Christine (2016) and Actress (2014). He’s edited many fiction and nonfiction movies, includingGolden Exits (2017) and Approaching the Elephant (2014). Robert is the Filmmaker- Built in ND Filters Record to C-Fast or SD Cards in-Chief at the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri.CARMINE GRIMALDI (pg. 11, 48) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Built in ND fi lters with IR compensation reduce the amount of light entering the You get both dual C-Fast 2.0 and dual SD/UHS-II SD card recorders so you Chicago, and a fellow at Harvard’s Film Study Center. His films have screened internationally, and his first feature, set at a carnival in Kentucky, will be finished someday camera. The fi lters are designed to match the colorimetry of the camera, can choose the media that works best for you. C-Fast cards are ideal for full soon. JIM HEMPHILL (pg. 22, 36) is the writer and director of the award-winning filmThe Trouble with the Truth, which is currently available on DVD and iTunes. He also providing additional latitude so you can use di ff erent aperture and shutter resolution RAW recording, while common, inexpensive SD cards are perfect hosts a monthly podcast series on the American Cinematographer website and serves as a programming consultant at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles.DA- angle settings for shallower depth of fi eld, and specifi c levels of motion blur for ProRes or RAW HD. With non-stop recording, when one card is full recording VID LEITNER (pg. 60) is an Oscar-nominated producer and Emmy-nominated DP with over eighty credits in feature-length dramas and documentaries, including eight even in bright conditions. automatically continues onto the next! Sundance premieres. As Director of New Technology at DuArt Film & Video in the 1980s he led advances in optical printing, Super 16 blow-ups, camera/lens testing, and film-to-tape transfer. Later that decade he spent a year at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, restoring 16mm lunar footage to 35mm. He is an author (Kodak’sCreating Better Video With 16mm Film), tech columnist and industry consultant on camera and lens design.SEAN MALIN (pg. 6) is a critic and producer based in Austin, TX. He Powerful Features and Controls Blackmagic writes about film and comedy for The Austin Chronicle and digital media for Paste Magazine. WHITNEY MALLETT (pg. 54) is a writer and filmmaker living in New York. Like the world’s best broadcast cameras, URSA Mini Pro features tactile control URSA Mini Pro Her short documentary Gospel Mime premiered at Hot Docs and online at Nowness.com. CALUM MARSH (pg. 44) is a staff critic at theNational Post in Toronto. SAM buttons, switches, knobs and dials on the side of the camera, giving you direct MAY (pg. 66): Taking an interest in all things film. Learning from the past, wary of the future. CHRIS HEGEDUS andD.A. PENNEBAKER’s (pg. 40) forty-year collabora- access to important settings. They’re laid out logically, making them easy to $5,995 tion includes the Dylan classic Dont Look Back and the Academy-Award nominatedThe War Room. Hegedus received a Director’s Guild Award forStartup.com and in 2011 remember so you can change settings without having to look at the buttons Includes DaVinci Resolve 12 Studio the Academy honored Pennebaker with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Their latest film, Unlocking the Cage, is on HBO.BLAKE WILLIAMS (pg. 13) is a filmmaker, critic, or take the camera off of your shoulder! Plus, every control is redundant! for editing and color correction. programmer, and PhD candidate in Cinema Studies who currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

4 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 Learn more at www.blackmagicdesign.com Viewfi nder, lens and accessories shown, can be purchased separately. Reports mance in Rosemary’s Baby as an example. “I wonder how much more of that there could be if there was a fair representation of wom- Spirit of a Startup en behind the camera.” Several of the above-cited programmers Barbara Bruni visits the new Feirstein Graduate reverentially cite fest veterans like Shannon School of Cinema. Lark and Heidi Honeycutt, founders of the now-defunct Viscera Film Festival (Honeyc- utt now co-runs Los Angeles’s Etheria Film Night), or Kier-La Janisse, the multihyphen- ate programmer and author of tomes like House of Psychotic Women and the upcom- The value of a fi lm school, like any insti- Feirstein o ers a three-year M.F.A. in eight ing Lost Girls: The Cinema of Jean Rollin, as tution, lies not in the sum of its parts but subjects (cinematography, directing, post- inspirations. Indeed, Janisse, who currently in the people who walk its corridors and production, producing, screenwriting, media programs for the Motel X Festival Interna- inhabit its classrooms and o ces. And the scoring, sonic arts and, from fall 2017, digital cional de Cinema de Terror de Lisboa as people who walk the 68,000 square feet of animation and visual e ects) and a two-year well as Melbourne’s rambunctious Monster the new Feirstein Graduate School of Cin- M.A. in cinema studies, and is housed in Fest, warns that any narrative suggesting ema in Brooklyn — its students, faculty and Steiner Studios, the largest studio complex that female genre programmers are becom- administration — are animated by the ef- outside of Hollywood. While there is no o - ing newly active in response to the success fervescent spirit of a startup. cial link between the two entities, their prox- of women horror filmmakers only reinforces Yet the parts that make up the school are imity has advantages beyond just breathing wider cultural ignorance. She writes: “You without a doubt impressive, too. Purpose- the general air of fi lmmaking’s hustle and need to go back further. Adele Hartley built on two fl oors of a renovated building bustle: the occasional guest lecturer drop- started Edinburgh’s Dead by Dawn in 1993, in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, the school boasts ping in from the lot, or receiving discarded I started CineMuerte in 1999, Rachel Belof- state-of-the-art lecture and editing rooms, sets from canceled TV shows. sky started L.A.’s ScreamFest in 2001 [and] DaVinci Resolve fi nishing suites for color Founding director Jonathan Wacks, who Consuelo Holtzer has been programming correction, sound stages (including one brings his wealth of experience both as a for the Strasbourg Fantastic Film Festival go- measuring 4,000 square feet), a motion- fi lmmaker Powwow( Highway) and head of ing back nearly that far, too. Women genre capture studio, a Foley stage, ADR studio, fi lm programs across North America (Em- programmers and women running genre music scoring studio, an 80-seat screen- erson, College of Santa Fe, Vancouver Film film festivals or being their artistic directors ing room with 4K projection and surround School), has been involved with the school is not new — it’s just that maybe men didn’t sound and a generously stocked, up-to- since the early planning stages and sees decide to pay attention until recently.” date equipment center. Feirstein as the ideal fi lm school in terms of Regarding submissions, Nicole McCo- Now fi nishing its second academic year, see page 70 ntroversy, the long-time director of programming for the Boston Underground Film Festival, says that she has “noticed the scales tipping more and more in the last five years” toward 50/50 male-to-female representation in her fest’s film entries. Like Janisse, she sees female genre fan- dom as something that “has always existed and has always waited painfully patiently for stories from our perspective to be told on the big screen.” As Neidorf observes, the benefits of seeing women supporting women will be invaluable for the future of genre cinema: “You see yourself represented or you see someone else doing something that you’d like to be doing, and you realize, ‘Oh, shit, I can do that, too.’”■

Students on the soundstage of the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema PHOTO COPYRIGHT MALCOLM BROWN

8 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 Film School

Film Schools in a Time of Disruption

Cable TV dramas, streaming originals, VR and, oh, yes, movies — students entering film schools today have ambitions shaped by our rapidly changing entertainment landscape. How are film schools adapting? Calum Marsh reports.

At YouVisit Studios in midtown Manhattan, Ben Leonberg, Scott Riehs and Alice Shin- YouTube channels.” delar, three recent graduates of the fi lm MFA program at Columbia, bring their education Amidst it all, the traditional fi lm indus- to bear in rather unexpected ways. They are still, in a sense, fi lmmakers — Leonberg a try, which many graduating students will creative director, Shindelar a writer/director and Riehs a creative producer, each aspiring look to for employment, is in a period of to one day make a feature. But as their day job they practice fi lmmaking of a very di¡ er- transformation and tumult. Film school is ent type: together they conceive, write and shoot commercial content that YouVisit calls meant to prepare its students for that in- “interactive virtual experiences.” They work in 360-degree video and with virtual-reality dustry — but how is one prepared for the headsets. They experiment with new technology and help to pioneer undiscovered forms. fundamentally unpredictable? A student In short, Leonberg, Riehs and Shindelar are on the vanguard of a fi eld that, when they en- who graduates tomorrow enters an indus- tered fi lm school fi ve years ago, did not even exist. try that scarcely resembles the one from It used to be that a student in fi lm school would have a clear idea of what he hoped which his professors would have emerged to learn. Filmmaking, after all, was a kind of trade, and school furnished the prospective in their day; there’s no guarantee that what practitioner with a wide array of practical, mechanical skills: how to load a Bolex with 8mm next semester’s cohort are set to enter will stock, say, or how to cut a workprint on a Steenbeck fl atbed. But as the gulf that once divid- resemble the industry as it looks today ei- ed professional equipment from the staples of the consumer hobbyist continues to narrow, ther. A fi lm school that refuses to accom- and as budding young directors familiarize themselves with digital cameras and laptop modate this change, that resists the truth editing while still in their teens, the kind of training fi lm school o¡ ers no longer seems like about a volatile fi eld, risks obsolescence. rarefi ed expertise. Writes Robert Bassett, professor and dean at Dodge College of Film and So, the question posed to educators and Media Arts, Chapman University, in an email, “I have seen fi lms made by fourth-graders department heads throughout the country that are coherent and compelling. Students today arrive with a more sophisticated sense is this: What should a fi lm school look like of fi lm language than in the past.” at a time of disruption? How should a fi lm Meanwhile, the bleeding-edge innovations students are eager to study evolve so rap- school respond to change? idly that departments can hardly keep up. Continues Bassett, “Today, students to some Producer Christine Vachon, who is also degree are driving curriculum. A good example of this is in the fi elds of virtual reality and director of Stony Brook and Killer Film’s augmented reality. Some students have a better understanding of these new platforms MFA in Film, answers by challenging the than some faculty.” question itself. “There’s always a disrup- And then there’s the fact that many incoming students not only are already making fi lms tive change,” she writes in an email. “For but distributing them. “The democratization of distribution is a massive change,” writes decades we’ve heard clamoring about Leighton Pierce, dean, School of Film/Video, CalArts, in an email. “We can self-publish to independent fi lm being dead — that this millions of viewers free from the traditional vetting systems of festivals, studios and dis- is the era of the webisode; that this is the tributors. It is not the same world.” Agrees Anne Russell, program director of the produc- golden age of television; that creating con- tion MFA at Full Sail University in Florida, “[Students] are incredibly tech-savvy. They’re tent via focus groups, purchasing power or coming out of high school and most of them already own DSLRs, or already run their own integrating viewer decisions is how the in-

44 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 ‘gear’ class, or a ‘techniques of fi lmmaking’ class when we are living in a much more complex and interactive world? Gear and fi lm techniques matter a lot, but in 2017, so do strategies of narrative motivation in game structure and immersive possibilities of sound design, for example.” Accordingly, Pierce says that at CalArts the school is developing not just courses in VR and sound design but “courses that can cultivate ‘spa- tial design’ mind, ‘sound design’ mind, ‘narrative’ mind, ‘game’ mind, etc.” Similarly, on the east coast, at the Colum- bia University School of the Arts, the Digital Storytelling Lab explores with its students similar concerns. Lance Weiler, a founding member of the lab and its current director, describes the DSL — which works with Columbia University students on set VR, artifi cial intelligence and the Internet of Things — as about “technology in service of story. What we’ve done with the Digital Storytelling Lab is created a space that al- dustry will stay relevant and alive.” Vachon tors in knowing what things will cost and lows for experimentation. How can we use goes on to preach a platform agnosticism, thus the size of the project. (Can the cost be story as a tool to innovate, to entertain, to one that fi lm schools must adapt to: “Sto- justifi ed by the potential audience and mar- mobilize?” Echoing Vachon and Brandeis, rytellers are now feature fi lmmakers, they keting to reach it? Will anyone be willing to Weiler says that, technologically speaking, are TV series producers, viral video makers, invest in this fi lm at a projected size/cost?)” the lab is “agnostic”: “It’s not about any one digital shorts creators, mobile story devel- Magdalene Brandeis, associate director, platform or technology, but what makes a opers, streaming media content producers Stony Brook/Killer Films MFA in Film, cites story powerful and emotionally resonant — and whatever comes next.” this need as well: “We shape our curricu- and then building a technology that allows Indeed, the multiplatform world dis- lum to guide our students to look at each for that story to be told. We don’t teach cussed by Vachon and Russell — and ex- project holistically to determine the best coding or JavaScript here. We introduce emplifi ed by our three YouVisit fi lmmakers medium, be it a full-length feature, short storytellers to the potential of these new — presents a number of challenges to tra- form or scripted television.” emerging forms.” ditional fi lm school curricula. For Bassett, For others, the disruptive e¡ ects of new But change at fi lm schools is not all about the “largest, most controversial disruption” viewing and distribution technologies cut new forms of entertainment most of us are a¡ ecting the fi lm business today, one that deeper, to issues of both content and form. not even experiencing yet. There’s a more schools must respond to, is brought about “Interactive games, VR and 360 video all basic set of responses having to do with by streaming and the collapse of the the- shift the dominance of theatrical-oriented responding to daily industry trends. For atrical release window. “With the rise of experiences,” writes Pierce, who also cites Reeves Lehmann, chair of the BFA Film, streaming and the demise of the DVD,” he increased use of headphones by solitary Video and Animation department at New writes, “theatrical is pretty much reserved viewers and “the speed skating that we do York’s School of Visual Arts, it behooves for fi lms with very specifi c audiences who through images, information and the read- a fi lm program to react to change in real will turn out for the movie. What this means ily available history of cinema on YouTube” time. “We really react to what’s going on for students is that they need to understand as creating new viewing paradigms fi lm in the industry,” he says. “As it changes, we how to size a project that will bypass theat- schools must address. She muses, “When, change.” By way of example, he points to rical release. Learning how to size a project even, is it actually production of fi lm/TV the recent infl ux of television productions is a fundamental reason to give students products, and when is it more guidance in the city, drawn by state and municipal tax experience in all aspects of the production through a particular produced world (I am incentives and new stage facilities. “When I process, so that they know how to light a thinking of 'game mind' here)…. How can saw the rapid increase in television produc- scene, design and dress a set, place the we integrate strategies of fi rst building an tions, I outreached to that arena and start- camera, work with actors, shoot so they environment — as we might do in VR or in ed hiring people and developing courses in can edit for dramatic e¡ ect, etc. — and so a game — into the very fi rst stages of de- directing, producing, editing and shooting they will know how long each step takes signing a linear fi lm?… Why should a basic episodic television,” he says. and what’s involved as these are key fac- video production class in 2017 simply be a This surge in local TV production has PHOTO BY JOEL JARES

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 45 Film School

demands of an ever-fl uctuating industry, while honing their creative sensibilities, voice and storytelling skills.” “You have to be able to understand the importance of branding, marketing and distribution,” Russell concurs. This is a big change from the days of old. “When I went to fi lm school, they didn’t place any importance on that. But now we put a big focus on it. You have to think about yourself as an artist, as a content creator and as a brand. You have to understand not just how to make fi lms but how to navigate the di erent distribution pipelines that are going to be available to you in order to succeed.” Alternately, some schools are taking this period of change as an occasion not to over- haul but simply to re-emphasize the core values of an education in fi lm — the fundamentals that remain indispensable no matter what the industry will look like in 10 more years. This is certainly the prevailing ethos at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts fi lm program. Maureen Ryan, associate professor and chair at Columbia’s fi lm program, insists that this principle defi es the change that plagues the industry. “No matter how technology changes or how distribution channels change or how the industry at large changes, it’s still about narrative storytelling,” she says. “We’re ‘the story school,’ and that doesn’t change. That puts us is in a good position for whatever happens.” Although she says the school meets the demands of a shifting SVA students on set industry — identifying where the jobs are at present and helping direct students toward those areas — she argues that “teaching them the basics of story and structure is the been a boon to New York fi lm students, Vachon stresses the importance of bedrock” of a useful education. Lehmann says: at present, there are “tre- teaching the business of fi lm as well as fi lm “I feel like it’s a way of future-proofi ng mendous opportunities for internships and itself. “I have taught at many of the fi lm one’s MFA experience, because it allows you entry-level positions” on sets around the schools in this country — and all over the to go in any direction, wherever you as a sto- city. When fi lm schools trained more ex- world,” she writes, “and what I have seen, ryteller or fi lmmaker want to go,” she says. clusively for feature-fi lm production, it was especially in the last few years, is that many “You need a good understanding of story di cult for new graduates to fi nd work; the schools function without an awareness and character development, because story industry was notoriously hard to break into, of the reality of the fi lm business today — and character development never change. and unions were resistant to giving students and students today need, both fi nancially In fact, with all the advances in technology, even minor jobs. “But it’s not that way any- and creatively, to develop an understand- now more than ever you still need to get to more,” Lehmann says. “We’re reaching out ing of the business alongside their craft.” the essence of what you are trying to say.” to these TV productions and providing them Stonybrook, continues Brandeis, is also As an illustration Ryan points to Making a with young, energetic students, who now committed “to teaching students how to Murderer, the 10-part Netfl ix true-crime se- have a fabulous chance of getting work. If approach their careers as entrepreneurs, ries co-directed by Columbia alumni Moira you do the right things in school, most likely build and sustain relationships, and react Demos and Laura Ricciardi, on which Ryan you’ll be o ered a job the day you graduate.” and respond to the realities, practices and served as production advisor. “It was made PHOTO COURTESY OF SVA

46 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 as a thesis, as a short documentary. Twelve want to immerse themselves in traditional regardless of the unpredictable fl uctua- years later there was a format in the world 16mm experimental fi lm techniques. We tions of the fi eld. Film school still matters, in of TV that allowed them to make it what it have animators who are as interested in in- short. Change is reminding us exactly why. really needed to be, a multipart nonfi ction teractive installation as they are in making Back at YouVisit, Leonberg, Riehs and series.” Its success was not a matter of movies. We have students seeking millions Shindelar contemplate what they gained Demos and Ricciardi having been instruct- of viewers worldwide on the internet, while from their time at Columbia. “It’s true that ed to pursue a novel structure or taught the we also have students craving the intimacy we didn’t learn about the technology we’re best way to innovate in the digital sphere. of micro-cinemas.” Echoing Vachon, she working with now,” Shindelar concedes. It had to do with their education in story- states, “The challenge is in how to avoid “It’s wasn’t there yet. That’s probably one telling and their inclination to adapt to what allowing any students to ghettoize them- of the things we could have gotten out of was possible at the time. selves. No student should leave CalArts fi lm school if it had been.” On the other Barbara Schock, chairperson at New York knowing only one mode of production or hand, perhaps that doesn’t matter so much; University’s Tisch School of the Arts, tells only one mode of exhibition.” they’ve adapted to the technologies they’re me that it is indeed important for schools It seems to me in talking to schools about working with just fi ne without formal in- to adapt to evident change: Tisch recently their specifi c responses to industry change struction in it and have instead applied started o¡ ering a program in streaming is that what has emerged is a sort of philo- the invaluable lessons of their education content, courses in virtual reality, and has sophical refi nement; this time of disrup- to the new forms. Tech evolves. It’s made opened up the possibilities for thesis proj- tion is clarifying the foundational merits obsolete almost as quickly as it arrives. But ects, from short fi lms to web series and be- of an education in fi lm even as it opens up some things never change. “The focus of yond. But while these kinds of tweaks and new areas for study. It’s no surprise that so our studies was on basic skills, like being tune-ups are valuable, what’s ultimately many schools seem to have reacted to un- able to identify what makes a good story. crucial, Schock insists, is that a fi lm school certainty and tumult across the industry by That’s future-proofed. That kind of educa- teach its students about voice. “It’s all about doubling down on fundamentals like voice tion future-proofs you no matter what form developing your voice as a fi lmmaker,” she or story — because it’s become obvious you’re talking about and no matter what says. “That’s what signals through all the that those fundamentals will remain vital kind of technology you go on to use.”■ noise of internet content. It’s not about fi lm versus television or online. It’s not one format or the other. It’s about voice. It’s about developing yourself as an artist.” This kind of DIRECTING, SCREENWRITING, expression is unique to the individual; it isn’t at the mercy of turmoil or trends. MFA IN FILM TELEVISION WRITING, CREATIVE PRODUCING And in this, at least, fi lm schools are en- joying a wave of positive change: There are more diverse voices emerging now than ever before in the history of the industry. “That’s MA IN FILM STUDIES a lot di¡ erent than when I went to fi lm school,” Schock laughs. “There were only fi ve women in my class. These days we like to say we have almost as many men in our fi lm program as women.” And she predicts that over time this will be a continuing area of growth for fi lm schools around the globe. “Filmmaking is becoming more democratic. I expect we will see more fi lms by women and more fi lms by people of color. The stats are still poor, but I think that’s improving.” “I expect that as time goes on, the traditional defi nitions of our separate programs within the School of Film/Video will erode,” Photo / Joel Jares Pierce concludes. “For example, our Film Directing students (the most narrative- based, live-action program) come to Ca- lArts seeking experience in animation, VR and game design. We also get students ARTS.COLUMBIA.EDU/FILMMAKER who are countering digital culture and really

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 47 Film School

Beyond the Boundaries of Language

Carmine Grimaldi surveys an emerging kind of academic program that could support the next wave of experimental ﬁ lmmaking.

In recent memory, there’s been a never-ending deluge of bad news for the arts and tradition or single methodology from which humanities in the U.S.: government support, which is already low, may be cut entirely; uni- they all draw. That they seek to blend art, versities, facing budget crises, have axed language and arts programs; prominent professors technology and academia only complicates spend their time writing books defending the basic value of humanistic inquiry, while their this further; each program chooses different pecuniary graduate students fight for poverty wages as adjuncts, and earn a little money on varietals and then mixes these ingredients the side writing articles about their plight. a little differently, and the professors who In the midst of all this, I was struggling to put together a dissertation proposal — it was lead these programs often have distinct in- something on the history of art and science, the way aesthetic intuitions could inform “ob- terests that then shape them. At DXARTS, jective” scientific models — and had fallen into a state of panic. Many of the thinkers and for example, there’s a strong faculty pres- artists I cared about had celebrated a knowledge that couldn’t be written down, but here I ence in experimental sound art; at UC Santa was, trying to write it all down, like a collector pinning butterflies to a board. At the time, I Barbara a focus on data art and computer had no idea that something quite incongruous and extraordinary had been developing across programming; and at Harvard’s Sensory the country. While I quietly yearned for the return of the artist-scholar, and a culture that Ethnography Lab, a focus on avant-garde valued experiences without quantifiable value, a number of universities were championing nonfiction film. Not to mention that the new academic programs devoted precisely to this. Often referred to as “critical media prac- students are also free to take their research tice,” the departments have spread rapidly, taking hold at University of California, Santa Bar- in myriad directions. Doctoral students at bara; Washington University; Harvard; University of Southern California and, most recently, USC’s Media Arts + Practice doctoral pro- University of Colorado Boulder, where the doctorate program in critical media practices, gram, which accepts only three students a beginning this year, will be part of the university's first new school in nearly half a century. year, have done projects in media activism, Universities have long shielded thought from the burdens of economy — it doesn’t mat- world building, robotics, digital humanities, ter, for example, how much cash you earn with your argument about Ovid’s poetics; what immersive journalism, poetic science, game matters is that you earn the respect of a small niche of academics and bring prestige to the design, augmented reality — and the list university. These recent critical media programs suggest that universities could begin to goes on. If the scope leaves you somewhat afford art a similar space, where the media work of professors and students are valued as breathless, or even bemused, don’t fret; it much as a paper or a book. Unlike film and art schools, with their expensive tuition, these is precisely this openness to new develop- practice-based programs are often free, and provide health insurance, a stipend and teach- ments and new interests that most excites ing opportunities, giving students the financial security — at least temporarily — to develop those working in it. It will undoubtedly be- work independent of market demands. It’s optimistic, perhaps, but also possible to imagine come more unified as it carves out its disci- these programs developing into a university-based patronage system for film and media plinary norms, but for now, professors and arts, offering a counterweight to the dominance of European film and media arts so long students are happy to see where it organi- buoyed by generous state funding. cally takes them. Attempts to describe these programs as a unified project will inevitably fail — most of At first glance, there’s something rather them emerged independently, and there is no founding manifesto that unites them, no single peculiar about a doctorate in media prac-

48 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 Leviathan

tice, critical or not. The university, after grams are fundamentally committed to a new research informing each other: If your tastes all, already supports the arts through MFA definition of knowledge, one that values not are more traditional, there’s Pythagoras’s programs, which has long been the gold just analysis and written language, but also investigation of mathematics and music, da standard in art practice — it’s what you usu- embodied knowledge, visceral experience, Vinci’s interest in the forms of life, Goethe’s ally need to teach at an art program, and, of affect and the insights of aesthetics. As Holly investigations of color and optics; for those course, in the amorphous and underfunded Willis, chair of USC’s Media Arts + Practice with a more contemporary bent, there’s sur- world of art, it’s been used as an important program (and Filmmaker co-founder and con- realism, Bauhaus, cybernetics and the art marker of social distinction between profes- tributor) told me, “We’re at a moment where and technology movement of the ’60s and sionals and mere amateurs. When I asked we’re thinking about knowledge differently. ’70s. But if the idea isn’t itself radical, its in- Juan Pampin, head of DXARTS at Wash- It isn’t a single thing that’s known, it’s really troduction into the American university sys- ington University, why there needed to be something that’s produced in a series or inter- tem is. Academic research — whether in the doctoral programs in the arts, he responded relationships and interconnections.” This is all humanities, social sciences or hard sciences with a question of his own: “Why in the sci- part of a larger trend in the university, in which — has long been turned toward explication, ences do students spend four or five or six academics tired of the linguistic turn that analysis, clarification and demystification. years beyond the master’s program? Is it dominated scholarship in the ’80s and ’90s “I don’t think this is widespread yet,” Willis that art is easier?” And while no doubt the have turned to studying aspects of life that told me. To many in the academy, she went sciences will always have more funding, he seem irreducible to language: infrastructures, on, “all of this sounds crazy. There’s a ton of explained that DXARTS “wanted to give the networks, media, the senses, the environment pushback, and a sense that this kind of work opportunity to artists to get an equal amount and the mundane objects that make up every- is totally illegitimate.” Try to tell the old- of time and funding [as the sciences] to do day life. That some of these scholars began to fashioned deans, who have spent their lives the research they want to do.” yearn for academic work that itself broke the synthesizing archival research into mighty Pampin’s use of the word “research” is not boundaries of language seems only inevitable. tomes or crunching the raw data from their accidental. If students at an MFA program The notion that art practice can shape laboratories, that their work is but one form “make art,” students at critical media pro- knowledge isn’t exactly a new insight. Intel- of knowledge; try to convince them that grams “conduct artistic research.” These pro- lectual history is rife with examples of art and their books are no more significant than an PHOTO COURTESY OF CINEMA GUILD

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 49 Film School

An image from USC graduate Behnaz Farahi's Caress of the Gaze, an interactive 3-D garment

HARVARD’S MODEL OF CRITICAL MEDIA PRACTICE experimental sound piece, or a video game, or an avant-garde piece of cinema. That HAS THE BENEFIT OF BEING REPRODUCIBLE ACROSS these programs have eked out a niche in academia at all is itself rather remarkable. UNIVERSITIES WITH RELATIVE EASE. BASED PRI- By 2013, I had become excited by nonfiction filmmaking, and I continued to dally on MARILY IN VIDEO AND AUDIO WORK, THE TECHNOL- my dissertation proposal. While academic writing offered its intellectual puzzles, docu- OGY ISN’T ESOTERIC OR PARTICULARLY EXPENSIVE, mentary filmmaking seemed infinitely more challenging — there’s the ideas, but there WITH THE MAIN COST BEING THE EDUCATORS WHO are also the moods and rhythms, the social relationships, the movements that have to ARE SKILLED BOTH AT MEDIA WORK AND AT MEN- be improvised, and images that can shift in meaning with the slightest alteration. Com- TORING. BUT ITS LIMINAL POSITION BETWEEN DE- paratively, writing about what other people had written seemed drab. Then I saw Lucien PARTMENTS DOES POSE A CERTAIN PROBLEM. FOR Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s Levia- than — a non-narrative film on a fishing boat DESPITE ALL THIS TALK OF “ART AS KNOWLEDGE,” that violently thrashes between ship, sea and air — and noticed that it was produced, THE TRADITIONAL PROGRAMS STILL EXPECT A FULL inexplicably, by something called the Sen- sory Ethnography Lab at Harvard Univer- AND RIGOROUS DISSERTATION, NO MATTER HOW sity. I thought I may have found a solution. I concocted a plan for an exchange year at INSIGHTFUL OR IMPORTANT YOUR FILMS; AND Harvard, wrote emails to professors at the lab announcing my imminent arrival, heard MOST JOB SEARCHES, EVEN IF THEY ARE LOOKING nothing back, showed up in the fall anyway and through luck and kindness was allowed FOR SOMEONE WITH PRODUCTION SKILLS AS WELL, to study there. I found something entrancingly hybrid: ARE STILL PRIMARILY INTERESTED IN WRITTEN RE- It certainly wasn’t a film school — many students in the program, like me, had very SEARCH. – CARMINE GRIMALDI little background in filmmaking — nor was it academia, at least as I had known it: We PHOTO COURTESY OF BEHNAZ FARAHI/PIER9

50 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 spent very little time reading texts, in- While a number of students have built dis- these programs offer independent doctorate stead watching each others’ work, subject- tinguished careers in film while finishing degrees in media practice. Unlike Harvard, ing the rhythms and movements of one’s their dissertations — such as Stephanie which seeks collaborative work primarily in body to the same rigorous scrutiny that Spray and J. P. Sniadecki — for every success the humanities and social sciences, these you might a poem in a literature seminar. story there is a student who’s faced with a programs forge alliances with scientists and It felt both less tangible and more immedi- Solomonic decision. During my time at Har- the tech industry. Also unlike Harvard, the ate than anything I had seen in academia. vard, I saw a number of students tear them- work they produce tends to be based less And something surprising also happened: selves from their vibrant filmmaking to per- in traditional cinema and more in emergent In discovering these more concrete and functorily put together a dissertation, and technology and new media: virtual real- urgent questions about life and society, I much more often, shelve their film projects ity, robotics, expanded media and virtual found my academic work began to breathe to write the dissertation that their home de- worlds, to name a few. At DXARTS, for ex- again. The fact that writing lacked some- partment demands. This is by no means the ample, students build relationships with thing seemed fine, so long as there was fault of the media practice programs, but scientists and engineers at their university also a way to explore the rest. rather, the fault of an academic culture that and beyond, creating collaborative projects Harvard’s media practice programs — has yet to accept that academic knowledge that incorporate scientific research with de- which in addition to sensory ethnography can exist beyond the written word. Until the sign. Recently, for example, they’ve made include critical media practice, a clearing culture of knowledge changes more broadly headlines with their Art + Brain Lab, which house of sorts for media arts across the at universities — and that means not just has developed a technique to play music university — have emerged through their course requirements, but also hiring priori- through the brain waves on an EEG. Similar alliances with traditional departments. ties — it’s unlikely that Harvard’s model of to DXARTS, USC’s Media Arts + Practice This is woven into the fabric of these pro- media practice will meet its potential. doctoral program offers a list of seemingly grams. Peter Galison, a historian of science, Other programs, primarily on the West infinite resources from their School of Cin- a filmmaker and co-director of these pro- Coast, have taken a different tack. Rather ematic Arts. Students there engage in a di- grams, explained that these centers do not than an interdisciplinary program that ac- versity of emerging media, with access to so much exist in and of themselves — as companies the established disciplines, see page 72 art for art’s sake — but as a “form of research that would add dimension to work people were doing across the university.” An anthropologist, or historian of science, or sociologist, may find that there were significant aspects of their research that have meaning beyond language, and if they do, these programs are there to give them equipment and guidance. But if you’re a mere filmmaker interested in studying at the Sensory Ethnography Lab, and you We have GRADUATE don’t have the academic background to get PROGRAMS IN into a doctoral program, you’re pretty much a passion out of luck. to create. Harvard’s model of critical media practice Film has the benefit of being reproducible across universities with relative ease. Based primarily in video and audio work, the technol- Film & Media Whether you want to explore ogy isn’t esoteric or particularly expensive, Art MFA screenwriting, documentary, with the main cost being the educators who narrative ﬁlmmaking, are skilled both at media work and at men- experimental media, animation, toring. But its liminal position between de- Writing for partments does pose a certain problem. For installation, interactive art, or despite all this talk of “art as knowledge,” Film & sound design, Emerson gives you the traditional programs still expect a full Television the tools you need to cultivate and rigorous dissertation, no matter how MFA your creative voice. insightful or important your films; and most job searches, even if they are looking for someone with production skills as well, are Learn more and apply for free today at emerson.edu/feewaiver. still primarily interested in written research.

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 51 Film School

VR.edu

Randy Astle on the increasing role virtual, augmented and mixed reality are playing on today's campuses.

When I studied at the London Film School just over a decade ago, students originated all research through its Family Research Center of our projects on 35 and 16mm film and cut them on Steenbecks and Avid Media Compos- and to aid with design projects in its School er. What a difference a dozen years make: Now schools have moved beyond the digital video of Engineering. revolution and computer animation to whole new media and formats. Virtual, augmented Still, the primary way schools teach VR and mixed reality are forming increasingly large components of university curricula, giving a is for storytelling through films and games, shot of innovation to narrative filmmaking in the academy and bringing university computer and these programs, while having roots dat- science programs into the realm of traditional film schools. ing back to the technology’s infancy, are You might expect VR courses to primarily affect the fields of computer science, film and rapidly expanding right now. SMU, for in- animation, which is already experiencing disruption as many students are reaching beyond stance, has had a relationship with a local traditional CGI work, such as character animation, and into projection mapping and other Samsung research and development center new techniques. But many schools have been using VR for years in a broad range of disci- in Dallas for years. Gary Brubaker, a gaming plines that go well beyond storytelling. The University of Houston Virtual Reality Clinical industry veteran who in 2012 was named di- Research Laboratory uses VR to study mental health disorders and substance abuse; at the rector of Guildhall, the university’s game de- University of Minnesota Virtual Reality Design Lab architecture students create life-sized sign graduate school, has been watching the walk-through experiences; and Southern Methodist University uses it for both sociological growth of VR since the early ’90s. Thanks to nurturing long relationships with Samsung, Oculus, Valve and HTC, Guildhall has long been able to experiment with prototypes of equipment like Vive and recently made the move into large-scale VR teaching when they saw that devices like Oculus were final- ly ready to make the technology accessible to a wide public. Similarly, the University of Southern California has long been involved with VR, founding the Institute for Creative Technologies in 1999 and moving into occasional VR production years ago. “‘Immer- sive’ is part of our mission statement,” as the ICT’s director of advanced prototype development Todd Richmond told me, but only since 2009 has the ICT made VR a major focus of instruction in its Mixed Reality Lab. SMU Guildhall students experimenting with VR Nearby at the University of California, San PHOTO COURTESY OF SMU GUILDHALL

52 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 Diego, the Qualcomm Institute was formed they’re separate they can meet occasionally skills gets you the interview," Brubaker says. over 15 years ago, providing the impetus for and coordinate, but they’re not physically "But you get the job because you can work in a small Virtual Reality Laboratory that has together every day. Here we’re fiercely in- their culture. Working well in teams is what now been functioning for roughly six years terdisciplinary. We live or die together. Most gets you the job, the career.” (along with an active student Virtual Reality of the interesting problems that remain to USC’s Richmond agrees. “In order to Club), and this has gradually led to enough be solved require multiple people from dis- work in AR/VR/MxR, you need interdis- student and faculty interest that on May 2 parate disciplines.” Students are similarly ciplinary teams, in part because the tools the university opened an expanded lab that diverse, with undergraduate degrees in a and pipelines are not beginner-friendly. So can host vastly increased VR and AR in- variety of fields. Integrating them into well- we typically will have both computer sci- struction and student work. functioning teams is a major component of ence/engineering students partnered with The expansion at the School of Visual Guildhall’s program. “When we talk to game School of Cinematic Arts students, and also Arts in New York is even more recent: Again, companies’ hiring managers, having the see page 73 virtual reality has been occasionally used in its 30-year-old MFA computer art department, but only this past January when Ter- rence Masson became department chair did the program expand to make VR a continual focus. “One of the first things that I made a decision about was to ramp up VR & AR,” he says. An initial workshop course this winter was a success, paving the way for upcoming courses in storytelling in VR and augmented reality, Masson’s professional specialty. One reason that such programs are now becoming possible is the relative cost of virtual reality labs, which, as Masson points out, are slight compared with something like a motion capture facility with rigs and tracking systems. SVA is essentially tripling capacity from one lab to three, complete with three HTC Vives, three Oculus Rifts, Daydream, 360-degree VR cameras and Unity-based computers, all neatly fit into two floors of the MFA computer art department’s existing building. “For a few tens of thousands of dollars you can get a good space,” he says. In- dustry donations can also go a long way; Intel gave SMU its computers for VR processing, which, with five or six HTC Vives, makes for a fully functioning studio. If it’s relatively easy to physically create a VR space, then the more difficult question for university administrators might be which department to have sponsor it. VR spans the divisions between traditionally siloed departments like film, animation and computer science, but by and large schools seem to be placing VR in computer science schools and adding a healthy dose of interdepart- mental collaboration. Guildhall at SMU has a natural advantage because it already has a fully interdisciplinary faculty of artists, designers and programmers all under one ithaca.edu/rhp roof. “They can lean out of their offices and yell at each other,” Brubaker says. “When

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 53 Film School

Check Your Canon

Whitney Mallett on the push for greater diversity in film school studies.

The issue of diversity in the fi lm canon — the movies celebrated and studied at fi l m this year’s University Film & Video Associa- schools across the country — has come under hot debate in the past couple of years, with tion (UFVA) conference is “Media Diversity: students starting conversations about the larger consequences of curricular omissions. Inclusion and Convergence.” These conver- “When I look at a syllabus and there’s no one from my perspective on there, I wonder if my sations taking place within fi lm schools and ideas will be taken seriously by Hollywood or by any producer,” admits Zsaknor Powe, a intercollegiate organizations feel connected junior studying fi lm at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. “It really a ects the to larger movements calling out normalized artistic self-esteem of the students,” explains Powe, whose Black southern male perspec- white supremacy in the university system tive — and, basically, any perspective other than a straight white hetero cis male point of and Hollywood, but many emerged inde- view — is rarely refl ected in the cinema shared in required courses. pendently. For example, before “Racism But maybe fi lm programs around the country are fi nally starting to listen to concerns like Lives Here” became a rallying cry at Uni- Powe’s. University of Southern California, for instance, is revising the list they send to incom- versity of Missouri and #OscarsSoWhite ing students, “100 Films To Watch Before Starting the USC Program.” And the theme of fl ooded Twitter, fi lm student Gisela Zuniga started Radical Artists Aiming for Diversity (RAAD) at NYU’s Tisch at the beginning of her sophomore year in fall 2015. RAAD, an o¦ cial, student-run club, states its mission is “to promote an inclusive environment at Tisch…where [students of color] cannot see ourselves in our teachers, in the art work we study or in our classmates.” While advocating for curriculum changes, a more diverse faculty and a fi lm mentor- ship program, the group o ers a supportive network for black and brown students who often feel alienated in majority-white ma- jors. RAAD has participated in the school’s listening session on diversity and inclusion and organized an installation in the lobby of the Tisch building asking students to record their experiences based on prompts like “Have you ever seen yourself represented onscreen in class?” While Zuniga notes that Killer of Sheep not all students and faculty have welcomed PHOTO COURTESY OF MIELSTONE FILMS

54 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 her provocations of the status quo, small dents that included Charles Burnett. While and using university equipment. With this steps have been made: The faculty has hired the program only lasted until 1973, it’s seen legacy in mind, the school continues to pri- more instructors of color, and all instructors as an origin point for L.A. Rebellion cinema, oritize diversity in a spirit of reimagination. are given more diversity training. “When- acknowledging a cohort of Black fi lmmak- Kathleen McHugh, professor and chair of ever a teacher or an administrator in the fi lm ers who went through the UCLA program the department of fi lm, television and digi- program runs into me, they tend to tell me and collaborated on one another’s fi lms. tal media at UCLA, argues, “The goal is not updates like, ‘We’ve hired four more faculty Burnett’s 1978 fi lm Killer of Sheep, which to- just to shoehorn in more underrepresented of color,’” recounts Zuniga, which speaks to day is the only token African-American fi lm groups — that is, to supplement the canon. the infl uence she’s had at Tisch, but also to on many intro class syllabuses, was actu- It is to rethink the larger fi eld of fi lm and white fragility, in the sense of a deep need for ally completed as part of his UCLA degree media culture itself.”■ validation for overdue micro-progressions. “I’m like, that’s awesome but do you want me to congratulate you? Do you want me to give you a high-fi ve?” “Obviously, academia moves slowly,” re- Don’t Just Make a Film minds Norman Hollyn, a professor at USC Cinematic Arts and president of the Uni- versity Film & Video Foundation. At USC, faculty and administrators started making changes a little over a year ago, and like at NYU, the impetus was student pressure. Hollyn notes these include “the formation of inclusivity committees, hiring of underrepresented fi lmmakers on our faculty [and] a better and more diverse selection of clips [to teach concepts like ‘long shots,’ ‘zoom shots,’ ‘crossing the line’].” He adds, “We are also introducing a mandatory class Make a Career in diversity to be taken by all incoming fi rst semester graduate students.” Through the UFVA, fi lmmaker Jen Proctor has been conducting surveys, fi nding that “the limitations of the canon as shared in fi lm classes are perhaps the most often cited among both faculty and students as a way in which we fail our diverse student bodies, both in fi lm production classes and in fi lm studies classes.” The diversity of the fi lms taught and the diversity of the instructors teaching them are, of course, related. “In- structors who are women, of color and/or LGBT make far more of an e ort to be inclu- As an MFA student at Regent University, you’ll gain access to film experts and more than $1 million of industry-standard equipment. Choose from over 100 sive because we are forced to pay attention annual film projects, such as our 2016 original In-Lawfully Yours — a commercially to issues of identity, di erence and diversity produced feature film now on Netflix and Amazon. Our students are nationally and on account of who we are,” contends Mary internationally recognized with over 400 film awards, including a Tony nomination and Celeste Kearney, director of gender studies Emmy Award. Learn how you could earn your MFA in Film-Television in just two years. and associate professor of fi lm, television and theatre at the University of Notre Dame. Directing | Producing | Script & Screenwriting While some schools are just now start- On Campus & Online ing to think about diversity, the University of California, Los Angeles is a notable ex- ception. In 1969, Eliseo Taylor, one of the LEARN MORE school’s few Black faculty members, initi- learn.regent.edu | 888.777.7729 ated the Ethno-Communications Program, Christian Leadership to Change the World working with a coalition of minority stu-

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 55 Film School

Making of the Murray Hustle

Documentary ﬁ lmmaker Robert Greene on building a new ﬁ lmmaking curriculum at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

It might have seemed like an odd fit when I was brought in to help launch the new ing sense that we were competing with our Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri’s es- teachers rather than learning from them, and teemed School of Journalism in 2015. If one were to describe my films, such as Kate Plays they felt that they alone had the keys to the Christine or Actress, the word “journalistic” isn’t likely to come to mind. Yet there I was, in kingdom. The program’s top-down focus on the hallowed halls of the world’s oldest journalism school, working with Stacey Woelfel, a getting us so-called practical training meant 30-year veteran of the institution, to build a new program from scratch. individual interests and passions were de- We wanted to create what Woelfel calls the “pirate radio station” of the journalism cidedly less important. The only thing film school, a place where creativity and formal exploration was prized over conventional re- school ended up giving me was time to work portage. I first came to Columbia, Missouri, because my films have screened at the True/ on my own movies and a reason to be in New False Film Fest, long appreciated for its programming of aesthetically frisky nonfiction York, where I could enjoy the city’s repertory films. My job, as I saw it, was to import this risk-taking ethos into the generally more tra- cinemas and get a real education. ditional J-School. I’m the art guy, Woelfel’s the journalism guy. Together with our students Because of this disheartening experience, — roughly 20 per class for our two-year program — we’re trying to take the nebulous idea I’ve worked with Woelfel to design a differ- of “documentary journalism” and push it to the most interesting place. Now that we’ve ent kind of learning space for our students. graduated our first class of students, including producing their 18 short films, I can report I can’t teach them how to make good films, on how we’ve accomplished this task. but we can give them the time they need to work on their own things and “fail up,” FAILING UP as celebrated editor Jonathan Oppenheim One of the first things I tell my students at the Murray Center is that I can’t teach them likes to call learning the craft of documen- how to make good movies. This may seem like a strange thing for a professor to say, but tary filmmaking. They also need to watch in- it’s actually a piece of hard-earned wisdom. I went to film school, graduating from the City teresting movies — lots of them — and with College of New York with an MFA in 2002, but that didn’t have much to do with me actu- documentaries and journalism students, ally becoming a filmmaker, despite the piles of student loans I accrued. Because of my own this is of particular importance. experiences, I’m deeply ambivalent about film schools. Making movies — particularly docu- In the students’ first semester, I teach a mentaries — requires a special mix of confidence, inspiration and hustle, and classrooms theory class in which we screen and discuss tend to squeeze these things out of us. But when I stand in front of a room of journalism many of the most innovative nonfiction films students and tell them I can’t teach what they’re paying good money to learn, it raises eye- of the past few years, including work like brows. This insight, however, has become a cornerstone of our teaching philosophy at the Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s Murray Center. Leviathan, Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq’s My time at City College wasn’t all bad (after all, I met my wife there), but it often felt like These Birds Walk or Joshua Oppenheimer’s I was at war with my professors, all filmmakers themselves. Once, after I showed a cut of my The Act of Killing, with a focus on decon- thesis film, which featured lots and lots (and lots) of slow motion, a professor told me that he structing the sometimes overly traditional “could do that experimental stuff” in his own films if he “wanted to.” There was often a dispirit- ideas — often reinforced by being in a jour-

56 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 David Sutcliffe give a detailed account, including sharing rare financial information, of the making of their award-winning (T)ERROR. These launch events begin a steady stream of visiting filmmakers that come to classrooms and organized events to share their stories and connect personally with our kids. In our two years so far, we’ve brought in 29 visiting artists, including such boundary-pushing filmmakers as Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson), the Ross brothers (Contemporary Color), Brett Story (The Prison in Twelve Landscapes), Jonathan Oppenheim (editor of Paris is Burning) and Omar Mullick (These Birds Walk). We also host programmers, writers and other lumi- naries of the documentary world, including a partnership with the Sundance Institute and their Art of Nonfiction initiative. These aren’t merely visiting lecturers; the talks, events and one-on-one meetings we design are meant to closely connect our students with the most stimulating people in Robert Greene in the classroom at the University of Missouri the industry and to create opportunities for filmmaking ideas to reverberate and war stories to educate. The idea, in many ways, is to structure an academic program that mimics nalism school — that students have about is to teach our kids that the aesthetics and the most stirring aspects of the best film fes- documentaries. We do things like debate ethics of nonfiction are endlessly delicate, tivals in the world. I came to understand who Victor Kossakovsky’s contentious 10 rules of while they simultaneously start to “fail up” I was as a filmmaker by engaging in these in- documentary filmmaking or personally ex- on their own work. cubating spaces — screening films and hav- plore the boundlessly complex relationships ing great conversations with smarter people I’ve had with my own film subjects. Later in MURRAY HUSTLE than me — and it’s my belief that this can the semester, I give them a particularly im- We launch this first semester by bringing in work for our students as well. The emphasis possible scene from Kate Plays Christine to visiting artists to screen their films and dive is never on following my path as a filmmaker reimagine with their own edits. Meanwhile, deep into their processes. For our inau- or Woelfel’s as a journalist, but rather on em- Woelfel teaches a hands-on production gural year, Rachel Boynton (Big Men) got powering students to seek their own paths class where the students make all types of personal about her idiosyncratic methods — to meet people, get inspired and hustle in short films. The idea of our first semester and last year we had Lyric R. Cabral and see page 74

We Make Films Happen

www.cinema.sfsu.edu PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 57 Film School

Pedagogical Praxis

Scott Macaulay on the work/teaching balance of fi ve independent fi lmmakers who teach independent fi lm.

George Bernard Shaw’s famous adage, “Those who do do, those who can’t, teach. He can contributing editor — summarizes the dilem- do, does. He who cannot, teaches,” fails when it comes to fi lm schools. Scratch the surface of ma: “You have to let them know that making most fi lm school faculty lists, and you’ll fi nd fi lmmakers who not only do but are also doing. a middle-class living as an independent fi lm- Developing scripts, raising fi nancing and shooting while on sabbatical, university-ensconced maker is like saying you want to pitch for the independent fi lmmakers have one foot in the ivory tower and one foot in the shape-shifting Yankees. But at the same time you have to world that is today’s independent fi lm production. Inevitably, then, they bring their hard-fought encourage them, because one — or several wisdom into the classroom, which means they must also grapple with one tough decision: — might do it!” How bluntly realistic should they be to those students who aim not to be TV directors or “ I think [teaching fi lm] is a mix of op- showrunners or VR developers or below-the-line craftspeople but independent fi lmmakers? timism and pragmatism,” agrees George Optimism and enthusiasm might seem necessary job requirements of a university professor, LaVoo, a screenwriter and director who but too much cheerfulness can seem, in today’s rough environment, to be a dereliction of duty. teaches at the School of Visual Arts. “When Or, here’s how State University of New York-Purchase visiting assistant professor Brandon I went to fi lm school, I didn’t get a lot of the Harris — an independent fi lmmaker (Redlegs), author (Making Rent in Bed-Stuy) and Filmmaker pragmatic — maybe because my very young eyes weren’t looking for it.” But with a feature in post and a web series on the immigrant experience for the city of New York in production, LaVoo says he’s compelled to share the realities of independent fi lmmaking. “When a director comes in and says that it took him fi ve years to make a feature, [students’] jaws drop, but we say, ‘This is normal.’ “I think it’s common that young people come into fi lm school having a somewhat idealized view of how quickly they can achieve success,” continues LaVoo. “We share our practical experience because we want these young folks to succeed, and talking about the marketplace is something you absolutely have to do. That includes simple things like how to market yourself, how to talk clearly, how to pitch, how to put togeth- SVA students on set er a lookbook.” PHOTO COURTESY OF SVA

58 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 SPIRIT OF A STARTUP sionals like producer Celia Costas and cine- from a car window while barreling through a from page 8 matographer Maryse Alberti, underscoring hail storm, make for a pleasant backdrop to infrastructure and study program. “Unlike the school’s symbiotic relationship with the the copious new neighborhoods developing many of its counterparts,” he explains, New York fi lm community. in the city’s outskirts; and the burgers at the “where there’s a general program in fi lm- These connections will be invaluable in conveniently located Stock & Barrel — also a making and most people want to be direc- the early stages of the students’ careers, great source for bourbon and Benton’s bacon tors, our school is built on a philosophy of says Kliot. “Most of these students don’t — are as good as they’re cracked up to be. specialization, much closer to the Ameri- have three or four years to hang out at (Get the Billy, and demand medium rare.) can Film Institute than any other school, their parents’ house. They need a job, and The festival itself, though, was the main at- so that we accept 14 students into one of I think everybody at the school is trying to traction, and as promised by the street ban- eight tracks and they can’t switch.” He em- give them the skills needed to survive in ners and posters plastered along the down- phasizes the importance, in this uncertain the real world the moment they graduate.” town core — they sold it as not only “the most economic climate, of emerging with a real Feirstein presents opportunities through adventurously programmed festival in Amer- skill set that allows students to immediately weekly track-specifi c symposiums with hi- ica” (Rolling Stone), but also “one of the most enter the workforce: ”If you come in here as gh-profi le guests, collaborations with the quietly earth-shattering, subtly luminous fes- a cinematographer, you’re going to leave Mayor’s O ce of Media and Entertainment tivals the world over” (Oxford American) — it here and you’ll really know how to shoot.” (the students direct and produce the web mostly lives up to the hype. Taking over cozy Feirstein is the fi rst public graduate fi lm series selected through the Mayor’s Of- nightclubs, state-of-the-art concert halls, a school in New York state and is a liated fi c e’s scriptwriting competition for women) centuries-old cathedral, the city’s modern art with Brooklyn College at the City University and includes a portfolio-building class in museum and a recently renovated 90-year- of New York, with which it shares an ethos the last semester. old movie palace (that’d be the Tennessee of diversity and inclusion. Continues Wacks, But ultimately it is up to the students to Theatre, which, with its immaculate Span- who also teaches directing, “In starting the make the most of the tools at their dispo- ish-Moorish architecture, belongs high on a school, it was essential to us that we become sal, and some of them show considerable shortlist of the most gorgeous places in the a space where new voices can be heard. Not initiative: Brian Petersen and Jess Maz- world to watch a movie — on 35mm, no less), just new ideas, and newly imagined ideas, za, both army vets, set up a writers’ room Big Ears casts Knoxville as a world-class en- but really di erent kinds of people, who had at the school last summer and employed tertainment town — accommodating to any not had an opportunity thus far.” their fellow students to shoot a web series and every scale of performance or projection, The school is active in targeting such ap- (Utilities Not Included, a comedy about three as well as our demands that art be challen- plicants, but the varied make up of the stu- roommates in Bushwick) that has recently ging and immersive. dent body (50 percent women, 45 percent been selected for the 2017 IFP Screen For- In only its second year, the film line-up minorities) is also largely possible thanks to ward Episodic Lab and will subsequently already feels like a vital complement to the the relatively low cost of attendance — about be presented to industry buyers during IFP tenor of the festival as a whole. Programmed a third of most private fi lm schools. The stu- Film Week in September. Their chance en- by film critic Darren Hughes and filmmaker dents are also eligible for scholarships. The counter in the building with one of the Vinyl Paul Harrill (who also both co-founded and award-winning producer Jason Kliot (Three producers led to the donation of the sets co-curate Knoxville’s acclaimed The Pub- Seasons), who teaches producing, explains, that saved them thousands of dollars. lic Cinema), the selection this year spoke “In a world where it’s a ordable to go to fi lm The tangible feeling throughout Feir- to the diverse possibilities for how Big Ears’ school, all of a sudden you have a group of stein’s sunlit rooms overlooking the mission is able to translate to the screen and diverse people, and it changes the makeup of Manhattan skyline is that of experimenta- gallery. Naturally, there were a number of it, the feel of it, everything about it, whether tion and adventure. The school feels like an concert films — namely, Jonathan Demme’s it’s political or cultural.” incubator where everything is possible for a iconic Stop Making Sense (1984), Storefront Kliot, who has worked with the likes of Jim fl eeting moment that the students recogni- Hitchcock (1998) and last year’s new Jus- Jarmusch, Alex Gibney and Nicole Holof- ze as precious. Hopefully, Feirstein’s likely tin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids, which cener and has taught at Columbia and NYU, success won’t get in the way of its irreverent together helped compose an eclectic 11-film was so impressed with the school and the and experimental beginnings, and the spirit retrospective spanning the late director’s students’ attitude that, after teaching a class of these fi rst years will remain intact.■ full breadth of interests; portraits of musi- for a semester, he accepted a full professor- cians, including Jem Cohen’s Benjamin Smoke ship, despite juggling a busy career, and has FEST CIRCUIT (2000), also part of a thorough retrospective also enrolled as a student in the M.A. pro- from page 13 of its maker; and a film made by a musician, gram. Kliot’s producing philosophy, and the their choice descriptor for this now-annual Meredith Monk’s hypnotic Book of Days focus of his class, is for producers to enable four-day celebration of avant-garde music (1989), a remarkably assured first film that’s the director’s singular vision to emerge. In- and film being “utopia.” So as far as conven- singular in every sense; there’s nothing quite deed, the school’s advisory board includes tional tourism is concerned, here’s what I like it, and she never made another movie. visionary directors such as Darren Aro- got: The people are generally friendlier than But for every explicitly music-themed of- nofsky and Steven Soderbergh. Others on those in my home state of Texas; the Great fering, there were several more that mined the advisory board include working profes- Smoky Mountains, which I briefly glimpsed some other aspect of what it means to per-

70 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 form — to take on a new persona, to watch perimental shorts programs showing under motion animation and extreme close-ups and be watched, to contain multiplicities, The Public Cinema’s Flicker & Wow monik- of household trinkets, colorful potions and to be present in the world. The “event” er unspooled in the same auditorium at the eccentric still lifes to induce a playful and that spoke most directly to each of these Museum of Art. The first, designed to ap- psychedelic display of occult mysticism. notions was Roger Beebe’s Films for One to peal to kids, was about as sunny an avant- Another high point of this year’s Big Ears Eight Projectors (2009), a collection of short, garde event as I’ve ever attended. Hughes’s was the video installation Look and Learn blossoming image streams — some digital, selection was daringly rigorous for the tar- (Parts 1 and 3) by California-based experi- some 16mm; sometimes one, sometimes get crowd — it included Chuck Jones’s un- mental filmmaker and puppeteer Janie Gei- eight — that Beebe brought and projected impeachable Duck Amuck (1953), but also ser, who (in addition to Virginia-based film- for us in person. Stationed with all eight Stan Brakhage’s personal print of Mothlight maker Kevin Jerome Everson) also had a of his projectors in the middle rows of the (1963) (which chopped through a projector program devoted to some of her video work. screening room, Beebe conducted a ser- that Hughes instructively placed in the cen- For Look and Learn, Geiser transformed a mu- ies of organized compositions that had the ter of the room) and a print of Norman Mc- seum conference room into an enveloping hums and purrs of the projection technol- Laren’s Begone Dull Care (1949) — but you revolving capsule of stroboscopic ephemera ogies grooving along with the soundtracks could tell that many of the two dozen or so and nostalgia. In one corner, a dual-projec- attached to the films themselves — which young’uns whose parents brought them out tion display operated by Qlab cycled through included everything from sound check reels were attentive to the lesson in abstraction jittery close-ups of various refracted and and pedagogical science animations to a they were being given. In the spirit of Peter folded paper materials, photographs and dia- music video he made for Holopaw. Per- Kubelka’s recent Monument Film screenings grams. The images and sounds themselves formances sit atop and/or alongside other and lectures, Hughes intercut the program create a present-tense sensation of taking a performances, a cacophony of messages with short explanations and demonstrations deep dive into someone else’s memory; no sprawl into and over one another, and all of what we were seeing, making sure to em- specific narrative is intended, leaving viewers threads achieve a sense of consilience de- phasize the materiality of celluloid and its with only the unsettling impression of lost spite retaining their autonomy. unique manner of animating images. As far time, un-regained. Across the room, another Though Beebe has shown Films for One to as film advocacy goes, I can’t think of a more video projector shot its images into a penta- Eight Projectors dozens of times since he first productive or noble way to spend a Saturday grammatic carousel of mirrors, redirecting premiered it eight years ago, its components morning in Tennessee, even if the crowd’s its stream of color-inverted yearbook photos and shape are in a constant state of flux. No clear favorite was “the Bugs Bunny one.” and blueprint maps so that they crawled and presentation is ever exactly the same (the Elsewhere in Flicker & Wow, the pro- twisted across the room’s walls and ceiling. In machines are each manually stopped and grams were considerably more demand- her efforts to conflate the interiority and ex- started by a human, after all), and its coming. This is especially true of the first one teriority of objects and our flawed means of position appears to be responsive to the — an ode to appropriation and the beauty accessing their (and our) pasts, Geiser turns context of its exhibition. On this occasion, of pure formalism — which felt deliberately time and the act of looking into a process of with the suite opening with a mélange of designed to support Manuela De Laborde’s ever-dissolving renewal. The room becomes projections that spoke to the act of hearing AS WITHOUT SO WITHIN. One of the very an intermedia space theatre, where sound itself, then concluding on a flickering bar- best films of last year and every bit as mas- and image feel both environmental and spec- rage of light and shadow, it was hard not to terful on a re-watch, De Laborde’s film was, tral. Like so much of what I saw and did dur- read the entire presentation as the meta- however, perhaps too long and onerous to ing this week, I know I’ll never experience this phor for the Big Ears experience that it was properly work its magic and win new con- piece’s specific images and sensations again, very likely designed to evoke. verts in the context of a festival as bustling which seems entirely as it should be.■ Beebe’s was the one piece in Big Ears as Big Ears. Easier to process was a three- that would formally qualify as “expanded minute 16mm piece called Them Apples, for INDUSTRY BEAT cinema,” but its forwarding of its own pro- which its maker, Adam R. Levine, created a from page 15 cess of becoming — its drive to manifest vertiginous, proprioceptive experience via a the world of film production, unlike many the audience’s consciousness into a space simple gesture: filming the iTunes visualiz- of his friends. He says, “I can’t tell you how outside of our minds and in front of our eyes ation screen while the software played The many people I went to film school with who — could be seen (or rather, felt) throughout Beatles’s “Back In The U.S.S.R.” (a fact not at had to go into real estate at some point.” the festival, whether in a short film program, all clear in the film itself, with the music hav- Representatives from university and col- a gallery space or in the sometimes quite ing been replaced with nondescript noise). It lege film school programs acknowledge that elaborate video projection displays that ac- wouldn’t have been at all out of place in the debt can be a heavy burden on their students, companied many of the music shows. (Or, kids program (very much a compliment). but they also maintain their commitment to in the case of a performance by Deathprod Likewise for Akiko Maruyama and Philippe assisting and advising them. According to at the Tennessee Theatre, it was there in Roy’s Koropokkuru, which, sitting somewhere Bruce Sheridan, professor and current cin- the sharp crystal of light that sprayed down between the work of Jodie Mack — whose ema chair at Columbia College Chicago, the from the ceiling and onto performer Helge Glistening Thrills (2013) returned to Big Ears nation’s largest nonprofit film and media Sten in the otherwise stygian palace.) to close out the kids program — and Anna school, materials and workshops inform stu- The following two days, three themed ex- Biller’s The Love Witch (2016), used stop dents on how to complete their degrees at

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 71 the lowest cost possible — standard advice fourth and fifth year MFA students. that is communicated by immobility and includes focusing first on getting subsidized But another currently enrolled Columbia silence.” Watching and listening to Bresson federal loans (such as Federal Perkins and MFA student says that despite individual fac- now, one fears that immobility and silence, Stafford Loans) or federal unsubsidized loans ulty and administrator’s best intentions, there far from having been used to the full, have (unsubsidized Stafford Loans) over the last are systematic problems that allow for the been supplanted by the dime-store dictates resort of private student loans. At the depart- persistence of excessive costs to students. of creativity and “visual storytelling.” mental level, faculty and staff regularly coun- “Everyone has their hands tied somehow,” he Bresson was not, above all else, a story- sel students on available scholarships and is- says. “The faculty is on our side, but they’re teller. He was one of cinema’s great com- sues of financial responsibility. Still, Sheridan scared of losing their job. The dean is scared positors, achieving like no one before or acknowledges, “Few institutions do it as well of the president, and the president is scared after him what may be the richest and clear- or consistently as I believe they could, Co- of the board of trustees. These are political est and most beautiful putting-together of lumbia College included.” choices that someone has to advocate for, sounds and images. USC’s Fink is surprised by the number of but it’s hard for them to come from students, L’Argent is out this summer in a new students who don’t even apply for scholar- because there are a lot of wealthy students, Blu-ray edition from Criterion. — Ricky ships and aid. At well-endowed schools such the turnover is quick, and it’s hard to reform D’Ambrose■ as USC and Columbia University, there are something so big in just four years.” endowments and both needs-based and “If they continue on this route,” adds an- BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES needs-blind scholarships that help defray other student, “they’ll end up with just a OF LANGUAGE tuition expenses. At USC, for example, the group of rich people.” ■ from page 51 George Lucas Family Foundation recently a dozen labs, including such as the Game made a commitment of $20 million to help LOAD & PLAY Innovation Lab, the Jaunt Cinematic Virtual students from diverse backgrounds. But from page 23 Reality Lab and the Mobile and Environmen- there are also over 50 scholarships and fund- the subject of another Bresson film, Yvon tal Media Lab. ing opportunities available for current School acts freely, with impunity, beholden not to These programs, formed as independent of Cinematic Arts students listed online, from painful impersonal forces — contemporary disciplines, avoid some of the challenges the Gene Autry Fund for Student Support to French society or the ravages of 20th-century faced at Harvard: Here, students’ written the Frank Volpe Endowed Scholarship. capitalism, for example — but to his own cos- work is valued equally to their media prac- Like Fink, Maureen Ryan, chair of Colum- seted vision and compulsions, which remain tice, and rather than competing for the stu- bia University’s film program, says her pro- unintelligible to us.) What matters is that dents’ time, the two organically build off gram has been able to increase scholarship Bresson found a way to assimilate each lowly each other. Yet these programs also face a support at the same time as setting strict station of his hero’s ordeal within a crowded dilemma, and one that’s potentially more caps on the amount of money that students nexus of everyday objects, effectively giving ominous. The focus on new and emerging are allowed to borrow to complete their to props as well as to persons an extraordi- technologies is far more capital intensive degrees, including their thesis films. “Our nary resonance and power. than single-channel cinema, and programs faculty is aware of the tuition costs and ad- Take, for instance, Yvon’s discovery of his that want to become most alluring to po- vocate for as much financial aid as possible murder weapon in the film’s final 15 min- tential students undoubtedly feel pressure for our students,” she says. utes. Bresson cuts from a medium shot of to offer opportunities at the cutting edge At Columbia, however, a group of gradu- an upright Yvon — having just woken up, he of technology and art. And with that, come ate MFA students recently organized to- holds a blanket in both hands — to a close- major corporations. While DXARTS from gether to protest what they felt were “semi- up of the floor below, covered in hay. An ax, early on decided to avoid corporate-funded hidden” fees in their post-coursework thesis in the center of the shot; along the bottom laboratories, the School of Cinematic Arts years, which amount to roughly $15,000 per of the frame, beneath the ax, is a wooden at USC is awash with investment from cor- year. “The actual details of how they were crate with two tubes of the insecticide Néo- porations like Microsoft, Sony, BMW, Steel- charged were extremely unclear and mis- cide. Next to the crate, at the frame’s lower case, Cisco and even the entertainment- leading,” says one current MFA student. right corner, are two stacked pails. The shot restaurant chain Dave & Buster’s. As Willis Though the base tuition was $5,000, there lasts less than 10 seconds, before Bresson explained to me, “It’s a delicate navigation. was an additional $10,000 in fees, which the cuts back to Yvon, who folds his blanket and You don’t want your students’ ideas to get students felt blindsided by. tosses it to the ground. As a dramatic unit, swept up into some corporate project, but After the students launched a petition, the image is offhanded, even unexceptional: at the same time you want your students created a Tumblr (CUFilmAction), and be- One can easily imagine the ax in the hands to have a real-world experience.” The tech gan speaking with the dean and the faculty, of Yvon’s middle-aged hostess or those industry has a long history of capturing ide- some of their concerns were heard: They of her spiteful, aging father. A thing, not a alism and utopian impulses, and shunting were able to raise some emergency funds weapon; a trinket among all the others. (The them into profit, surveillance and addiction. for those poorer students who were in dan- ax leaves the film with a splash, tossed into If all of these programs seem like a shin- ger of leaving the program, service jobs were a river by Yvon, never to be seen again.) ing hope against the instrumentalization of increased, and Columbia website now clear- Bresson, from his Notes on the Cinemato- the university, this should give us pause. It ly lays out the extra costs and fees for third, graph: “Be sure of having used to the full all would be a tragedy, but one that has hap-

72 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 pened many times before, if this movement ing? In all cases it includes fundamentals of versation makes AR experiences for archi- became yet one more research branch of storytelling principles. Richmond describes tects and designers to display their designs the corporate tech behemoth that already it as “pushing the boundaries of how we in real spaces, is pushing to make it available. structures so much of our lives. define narrative and exploring the new lan- He sees it as a more personal technology It’s still too early to know where any of guage of immersive,” while Hopf describes that allows for social interaction and inter- this will go: Will filmmaking become recog- his SVA course as “a mix of history, theory action with real spaces and the types of de- nized as a form of research and knowledge and studio work. So we read about the his- vices — smartphones — that people already on equal footing with a dissertation? Will tory of immersive technology and the philo- have in their pockets; in comparison, VR is the art-technology research nexus spread to sophical and societal implications of cyber- like having a bucket on your head. “I have universities across the country? And what space, while at the same time each student strong feelings that AR is a much broader, will be the role of tech companies in shap- worked on their own projects.” This leads to more ubiquitous and ultimately easier tech- ing this research? This fall, UC-Boulder will an individual project on Google Cardboard nology than VR. There are no heavy helmets welcome their first doctorate cohort into followed by a group project creating a more with trackers, you don’t have to be plugged the Critical Media Practice program. The immersive experience on the HTC Vive. in, it doesn’t get sweaty or heavy. Nobody has newest of these departments, it is poised Kamari Carter, an undergraduate who a problem holding up an iPad.” One student between experimental documentaries and recently took a course entitled Sound- just completed an abstract room-scale VR emergent technologies, drawing inspiration GameSpaceVR at California Institute of the piece that Masson proposed would actually and faculty from critical media programs Arts, describes how that class discussed work brilliantly in AR, indicating the type of around the country. It may be the best bell- the history and societal implications of im- AR work SVA students may undertake over wether for the future of the discipline. How mersive technologies before students cre- the next year with emerging technologies like it synthesizes these different programs, and ated their own socially conscious projects. the Microsoft HoloLens. “I think in five years how it navigates the potential pitfalls, will be “I’d been researching a lot about death and AR will be the steam locomotive, becoming a good indication of whether this movement what it was like before we as a society fully completely ubiquitous in devices like the will continue. And more than that: It will be a understood it, so I was very captivated by Google Tango and iPhone 8,” using improved good indication of whether it should.■ being able to do nothing but die [in a proj- image processing and robotic mapping algo- ect],” he says. “I made a very large greyscale rithms like SLAM. At USC, meanwhile, stu- VR.edu world where there were no objectives and dents are already using HoloLens to create from page 53 the only thing you could do was jump off AR experiences, taking projects all the way representation from across the campus. the side. When I pitched my project idea, from a pitch to a working idea and compet- We’ve had teams that also include MBA stu- three other classmates liked it so we made ing in Microsoft Design competitions. SMU dents, communications students and natural a conjoined game where dying in their world Guildhall students and faculty are creat- scientists.” Tyler Hopf, who recently taught brought you to mine and the ‘dying’ in mine ing AR/MxR experiences like a board game the virtual reality design class for SVA, had brought you to one of theirs randomly. It where real pieces interact with onscreen students “from several departments includ- was very different from my original concept pieces or a tool to teach first-graders chem- ing photography, design, 2-D animation and because I didn’t intend to work as a group, istry without the risk of burns or explosions. interior design. The range of backgrounds all but it turned out very well.” “It’s clear that AR is superior to VR in many contributing and experimenting with virtual At SMU, with its emphasis on gaming, ways,” Brubaker says, particularly in drawing reality has been incredible because VR is a students work on a variety of individual and in the world “from the other side of the glass” combination of all of those areas and more. group projects in both VR and other game into an augmented experience. But research My own background is architecture. No one engine platforms. These aren’t all finished and development is still underway, and the has a background in VR yet, and there are games; much work consists of research to current state of the art — such as seeing Yelp no VR departments, so it becomes even address issues such as nausea during VR reviews when you walk past a restaurant — more important to get students with a mix gameplay. One student recently created a doesn’t take advantage of all that AR has to of interests experimenting with the technol- simple game that could be navigated with a offer. “Google Search is not the interface we ogy.” Speaking of this course, Masson says, dozen different control schemes and mea- want for AR; there are more compelling expe- “It’s basically attacking the storytelling assured the nausea level with each method. riences than that.” Likening today’s AR to the pects of virtual reality, utilizing it as a new Research like this will help game develop- early days of smartphones, when every app medium — how to modify existing storytellers create more user-friendly experiences mimicked computer software with joysticks ing techniques. Very few people are doing it — and give students a remarkable portfolio and keyboards, Brubaker, like Masson, sees well. It’s the best people who are doing the piece as well. bright prospects for AR in the near future. best work, so we’re cherry-picking the best Perhaps most intriguing about all of these Perhaps the hardest thing about teaching people. I hope to get traditional filmmakers programs is the prominence of augmented VR and AR is gauging where the industry and DPs and production designers to col- reality — think of holding up your iPad to see will be in as little as three years, let alone laborate in this new medium. I want to pull digital snow juxtaposed on top of what your 10. When I asked Masson about the future in all this expertise from the past 120 years camera actually sees — alongside virtual re- of VR at SVA, he laughed and said, “I’ve of filmmaking.” ality. AR has never been taught at SVA before, learned not to forecast.” SVA’s focus, then, So what type of work are the students do- but Masson, whose company Building Con- won’t necessarily be to keep up with all the

SUMMER 2017 | FILMMAKER 73 latest technology, but to teach students For the second semester of the students’ that embodies the hybrid spirit of my role at sound fundamental principles applicable to first year, we build on this industry empha- the Murray Center. I’m actively making mov- various VR and AR platforms. And the job sis, focusing on helping the students pitch ies here — during my first semester I edited market is ripe, including not just film and their films, with a parallel concentration on Kate Plays Christine, and I’m currently devel- game studios but advertising, museum cu- maintaining the brain space to do actual cre- oping my new film — and these direct expe- ration, law firms that animate crime scenes, ative work amidst all the “selling.” In a first riences inform what I teach. I share footage, and on and on. “There’s really no area of for a documentary program, we directly re- development details and financial informa- society and markets that will remain un- produce the real-world practice of the pitch tion throughout the entire process, showing touched by some form of computer art, and forum, bringing in three respected judges my students things most filmmakers work it’s only going to grow,” says Masson. Most from the industry (folks like Simon Kilmurry hard to keep to themselves. It’s not easy to SMU Guildhall graduates go into game de- from the International Documentary Asso- have essentially two lives — filmmaker and sign, but a recent group of graduates was ciation, Judith Helfand from Working Films professor — but I’ve seen firsthand the posi- hired by Halliburton to create virtual real- and Jennifer MacArthur from Borderline tive results of having me actively connected ity safety training for oil rigs so users could Media) to publicly evaluate our students’ in- to the documentary world for our students. learn through muscle memory what to do in development projects, with an event styled When you stand in front of a classroom crisis situations. (The shock for many of the after the renowned CPH:FORUM in Copen- full of eager students, the responsibility graduates was how well Halliburton pays.) hagen. Meanwhile Woelfel teaches a busi- you feel for their futures can be piercing. On the one hand, schools are poignantly ness of documentary class, which focuses We feel at the Murray Center that the best aware that the tools of virtual and aug- on marketing, branding and other real-world we can do in such an unpredictable field is mented reality are new and that it is their applications. If our first semester is meant to empower our students to create their own students who will be forging new paths in it. shake up the students and get them to think routes to success. Our immersive, incubat- As Hopf, who plans to teach more VR and deeply about what they do, this second se- ing approach fits right in at the Missouri AR courses at SVA and perhaps elsewhere, mester is hustle time. School of Journalism, which has made its says, “The technology and theory behind sterling reputation with a hands-on, real- VR may be decades old, but the interac- JUST MAKE MOVIES world teaching philosophy called “The tions and visual languages are still unknown During the students’ second year, we clear Missouri Method.” The student-run NPR — and it will be the students’ job to invent out time for them to make their final films, station, television news station and news- them.” Richmond adds, “The students are which are required for graduating. The Mur- paper are all legitimate media outlets. Basi- pushing the boundaries of how we define ray Center essentially converts to a bustling cally, doing journalism matters just as much narrative, and exploring the new language production house, where we produce, help or even more than talking about journalism. of immersive. They are curious and want to edit and otherwise cajole these projects Our big idea — that only through diving create the next generation of content.” But into being — all while continuing to have into the world of documentary and actively at the same time, every person I spoke with our students meet with documentary’s best connecting with the best of the field can a also recognized that their programs have and brightest. All of our kids direct their own student figure out their place in it — has to feature a commitment to good storytell- short films, but we know we won’t be pro- found a natural home.■ ing techniques regardless of the platform. ducing 20 successful documentary direc- “We’re technology agnostic,” Brubaker says. tors a year — the cold, hard reality is that FROM BUSTER KEATON TO 8K “Content is king. In any medium, people who the business is simply too unstable for that from page 65 are good authors or filmmakers will rise to many of us to make a living just making mov- for this purpose. (Sony’s LA-EA4 A-mount the top.” This, of course, was the driving phi- ies. So the goal, besides finishing their films, to E-mount adapter contains an identical losophy at the London Film School: Shooting is to give our students pathways into pro- pellicle, bestowing fast phase-detection and cutting on film made us thoughtful in a ducing, shooting, editing, writing, program- autofocus upon Sony E-mount digital video way that video didn’t, and we became better ming, etc. In May of this year, we graduated cameras adapted to using A-mount autofo- storytellers for it. Today’s tools, of course, our first class, which produced 18 shorts cus lenses. Must be tried to appreciate how are vastly different, and schools are doing ranging from investigative to experimental very fast and reliable it is.) their best to keep up, but the discipline to to deeply personal to truly provocative. But Other phase-detection designs exist, create high-quality storytelling will be the perhaps more importantly, we produced a including sensors that scatter dedicated key for new students to carry virtual and graduating class that is deeply connected to phase-detection pixels amongst image pix- augmented reality into the future.■ the industry that they’ve chosen to work in. els, and Sony’s approach, hybrid AF that My official “Filmmaker-in-Chief” title is blend strengths of phase detection and MAKING OF THE MURRAY no in-joke; when I initially talked to Woel- contrast detection. (Apple’s iPhone “Focus HUSTLE fel about coming to Missouri, I asked that Pixels” are courtesy of Sony.) Whatever from page 57 I have a title that signaled to both our stu- the approach, phase-detection autofocus ways that make sense to them. We want to dents and the industry that I hadn’t cashed knows instantly if the focus is in front of, or bring the creative energies and, frankly, net- in my chips and given up filmmaking. Woel- behind, the subject before it triggers a focus working opportunities of places like True/ fel took the old “in-chief” suffix, commonly adjustment. Compare this to conventional False and Sundance into our academic space. used in newsrooms, and made up a new title contrast-detection autofocus, which stum-

74 FILMMAKER | SUMMER 2017 EXT. SVA THEATRE – OPENING NIGHT Your moment. Four years in the making.

BFA FILM filmandanimation.sva.edu