FMS Newsletter Fall 2017/Winter 2018 Director's Letter by Malcolm Turvey, FMS Director This fall, the Film and Media Studies (FMS) Program expanded in an exciting new direction with the arrival of Tasha Oren, Tufts' first professor of Television Studies. Tasha taught a class called "Television in the Age of Change," which you can read In this Issue about in this newsletter. She also participated in extra-curricular activities Director's Letter such as an interview with Michael Dobbs, arranged by Julie Dobrow, about the Student Animation adaptation to television of Dobbs' book, Experimenting with Film House of Cards. This February 5th, Tasha has arranged a talk by Professor John Upcoming Events Caldwell, distinguished television scholar Media Internships and filmmaker from UCLA, about on-line "maker" culture, to which you are all invited Expanding Television Studies (see below for details). We are delighted Alumni Profile: Brian Agler Tasha is here, and she is already having a big impact on film and media studies at Alumni News Tufts. How to Get Involved This fall also saw the arrival of Courtney McDermott, our new Program Administrator. An accomplished writer with a long list of publications including a book of short stories (How They Spend Their Sundays [Whitepoint Press, 2013]), Courtney has already made many welcome improvements to the running of the FMS program, including this redesigned, user- friendlier newsletter, which includes a section containing recent alumni news. Alumni, please be in touch with her about what you've been up to: [email protected]. Below, you can also find a profile by Courtney of Brian Agler (A11), director of West Wing Writers and former on-site speechwriter at the 2016 National Democratic Convention. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our Internship Coordinator, Leslie Goldberg, FMS continues to provide our students with many wonderful internship and other professional opportunities in the film and media industries. In this newsletter, you will find testimonies from our current students about their recent internship experiences. This January we are once again running our Winternship program, which enables students to intern for a week over the Winter break at a film or media company in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The Winternship program would be impossible without the support of our generous alumni, and we are very grateful to those of you who are hosting students this year. The program is a competitive one, with well over a hundred applicants for around twenty spots, so we are always looking to add positions. Please be in touch with Leslie if you would like to participate next year or if you have other opportunities for our students: [email protected]. (On March 9th, we are collaborating with the Career Center on a major event, a Film and Media Career Forum that will bring alumni working in film and media back to campus to impart their wisdom to our students. Stay tuned for further details!) The integration of the many wonderful courses on experimental film and media at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) into our curriculum continues apace. In this newsletter is an account by Hunter Silvestri, an FMS major and Tufts junior, of how a course he took on animation at the SMFA prompted him to go beyond conventional narrative filmmaking when taking Khary Jones's "Advanced Filmmaking" course this fall. Among other events, FMS also sponsored a night of experimental film organized by our Technical Specialist, Natalie Minik, which you can also read about in this newsletter. I look forward to being in touch again at the end of the spring semester with more exciting news about the growth of FMS. Until then, I wish you a very happy new year. Student Animation by Hunter Silvestri, A19 This semester, I wanted to make a short film with sets ranging in size from 2 centimeters to 91 billion light-years. For characters, I wanted an invisible cynical God, a shelled gastropod, and a birdsong. It was, in essence, a film more abstract in story and style than anything I’d hitherto done in my filmmaking courses or rightly knew how to capture on a GH4 camera—it was a film that could only be executed as an animation. I knew the technical basics of animation from an SMFA class I took last spring, but there was a lot I had to trial and learn before I could export my own animated short. My film easily could have died at that limit, an idea faltered without a structure or production. It’s a testament to the FMS department that it didn’t; I just took "Advanced Filmmaking." It was a genuinely great course. It belonged to me. I had a full semester to think about nothing but this one project, to expand upon nothing except this one idea, and I had the level-head of Professor Khary Jones to keep my goals realistic and my story compelling. Without the course I never would have had the energy or compulsion to make this art, and without Khary the pace would have been honestly awful. Instead, I leave this semester with hundreds of line drawings, dozens of After Effects compositions, and one film I’m really, really proud of. It’s called Escar-Gogh. It’s about a snail that paints. You can watch it below. Escar-Gogh by Hunter Silvestri, A19 Experimenting with Film by Natalie Minik, Technical Support Specialist On November 8, 2017, Film and Media Studies hosted the event, Experimenting with Film: a night with AgX Film Collective. The AgX Film Collective is an artist-run film lab and collective for moving image artists in the Boston area. FMS invited eight filmmakers whose work considers the expressive qualities of film and video. These experimental films gave the Tufts community a chance to reflect on work that looks beyond the narrative potential of moving-image and, instead, engages with the interpretive abilities of the mode. This program meditated on the physicality of filmmaking. Whether it is 16mm’s ability to interpret the quality of a fall day or the way in which we can manipulate a digital image to expose the digital distortions we’ve become numb to, these pieces used film and video to examine the material of filmmaking as a vital property of our experiences of moving image. Upcoming FMS Events Televisioning MakerWorld: A Poetics of Administrative Production Featuring: John Caldwell, UCLA Monday, February 5 6:00 pm Tisch 304, Tufts University Join award-winning media studies scholar and filmmaker, Professor John Thornton Caldwell (UCLA) as he discusses the corporatization of online "maker" culture, and how these new practices challenge traditional film and television aesthetics. Caldwell will be joined by Miranda Banks, Associate Professor in the Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College. This event is co-sponsored by the Tufts Film and Media Studies Program and the Boston Cinema/Media Seminar. All students, alumni, and friends are welcome to attend! Careers in Film, Entertainment and Media Friday, March 9 Tufts University Keynote Speaker: Andrea Nelson Meigs Talent Agent (Creative Artists Agency) Students will join professionals in the film, entertainment, and media industries for a day-long forum that will include a key-note speaker and two breakout sessions, followed by a networking reception with alumni and industry professionals. Registration is required. More details coming soon! Media Internships Foster Growth and Hands-on Experience by Leslie Goldberg, FMS Internship Director Media internships are an important part of the FMS program and offer students the chance to get “real-world” experience in the fields they are learning about in their classes. This year students worked in advertising agencies, public relations firms, large and small television stations, and newspapers. They also interned at start-up companies and nonprofit organizations. Site visit trips to Havas Media and Hill Holliday, as well as an “Art Trek” trip to New York City (sponsored by Tufts Career Services) also gave students the chance to tour media sites in Boston and New York and learn about the industry from skilled media professionals. Here’s what a few FMS interns had to say about their experiences this year: This semester, I interned for ImprovBoston, a local non-profit comedy theatre celebrating its 35th year in 2017. As an intern, I received hands-on experience about what it’s like to work in a comedy theatre. I not only assisted in day-to-day business operations, but also learned about the media side of live performances. I developed social media campaigns that allowed ImprovBoston shows to reach broader audiences, and I helped local businesses connect with the theatre online. I loved working with ImprovBoston because of the wonderful behind-the-scene experiences, and because the staff was so willing to help me learn. I recommend this internship for any FMS major or minor who is interested in marketing for theatre, comedy, or the arts! —Lily Blumkin, Class of 2018 When I accepted the internship at NBC Boston, I did not know what to expect. I had never been inside a newsroom, and my only prior experience with local news was limited to the "News at 10" commercials during sportscasts and the movie Anchorman. Nonetheless, I had always toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in sports reporting, and this was the perfect opportunity to explore that avenue. I was assigned the role of “assigning,” meaning that I assigned stories to dayside reporters at the station. I became immediately engulfed in the daily happenings of the newsroom; I fell in love with its fast-paced nature and adaptability to ongoing and breaking news situations.