Student News - June 2009

Alan Baker's News Wire

Rob Connolly won the 2009 BAFTA/LA Student Film Award for his film, Our Neck of the Woods. Runner-up was SCA student Alex Fazeli for the film In the Dark. Connolly will be invited to attend BAFTA events and screenings over the next year. Among the crew on Connolly's film were producer John Blair, cinematographer Jay Visit and associate producer Allison Schroeder. A group picture can be viewed here.

The third annual Women of Cinematic Arts (WCA) forum was held on June 6 at SCA and featured numerous alums participating on a variety of panels: Christina Piovesan, Joe Neurauter, Jessica Funches, Alyson Shelton, Jen Prince and Kevin Palys (The Independent Film); Susan Downey and John Knoll (The Studio Feauture: Storytelling Through Visual Effects); David Goffin, Marcy Patterson and Tamar Laddy (Weblets: The Marriage of TV and the Web); Jaffar Mahmood (Online Distribution); Ramsey Mellette (Internet & Beyond: Webisodes that Work); Alicia Kirk, Dara Creasey, Chad Creasey, Rebecca Cutter and Vince Marcello (Getting Out There: How to Get & Work with an Agent) Photos from the forum are available here. The WCA was founded in 2005 to provide networking and mentoring opportunities for students and alumni and support the presence of women in creative roles in the film, television and digital industries. The board includes alumnae and current students. 
 
Interactive Media Chair Scott Fisher reports that iMAP Ph.D. candidate Jen Stein is the recipient of the 2009-10 Intel Ph.D Fellowship Award. Her fellowship focus will be in the area of "Software Technology Design: Social Research and Design, and Mobile Computing" and she will work closely with Intel's People and Practices Research and Innovation Group, whose programs explore fundamental paradigms and phenomena of everyday life to help Intel think critically about how people, practices and institutions matter to technological innovation and to conceive of provocative experiences in the future.

The New York Observer highlighted Darfur Is Dying, the video game developed as a thesis project by IMD student Susan Ruiz ('06), as one of the games that inspired New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to develop a social networking game about women's rights, the story reported. Darfur Is Dying was originally the winning entry in an mtvU competition to spread awareness about the crisis in Darfur. 

iMAP Ph.D. candidate Kristy H.A. Kang, who is also one of the Creative Directors of The Labyrinth Project, was invited in June to give a seminar in Seoul, Korea at The Global School of Media at Soongsil University. The seminar was hosted by the Media Art in Aesthetic Technology program (MAAT). Her presentation, "Tracing Memory in Narrative Space," described the interactive projects created by The Labyrinth Project and featured a selection of Labyrinth's urban memoirs exploring cultural memory and history in urban space.

Jason Kaminsky (Stark '10) was selected to participate as an intern in the NBC Universal Pilot Program.

This summer's Fusion Arts program began on Tuesday, July 7, 2009. The exchange included 15 international students (hailing from Egypt, Lebanon, Mexico, France and the Philippines) and five Americans students. The group will spend four weeks in intensive writing, production and film studies classes. Screenwriting associate professor Pamela Douglas and senior lecturer Paul Wolff will teach writing; production professor Jeremy Kagan will teach directing and production and film critic Ella Taylor will screen and teach American history through its films. Associate Dean Michael Renov will teach one documentary session. The American films screened for the students included Sullivan's Travels, Double Indemnity, The Magnificent Ambersons, Unforgiven, His Girl Friday, Groundhog Day and the just added Goodbye Solo, directed by Ramin Bahrani. At the conclusion of the USC portion on August 4, the 20 students and four escorts will fly to Boston to begin a several-day educational tour that will include stops in New York, Philadelphia and end in Washington, D.C. The tour will combine early American history and access to major media resources including archives in Boston and New York and exposure to the film programs offered by the museums in all the cities. The group will have a debriefing with representatives of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and an opportunity to visit the numerous museums and other sites in Washington before leaving for home on August 15. 

In spring 2008, SCA student Stephen Boman developed an idea for one of his classes, based on his experiences as an organ transplant coordinator while an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. His SCA instructor was Trey Callaway, an adjunct and also producer of CSI: NY. The in-class pitch was heard by a network executive visiting the class who arranged for several prominent writers, producers and directors to participate in launching the project and were able to get CBS Television to commit to a pilot script and then a pilot. On the day after he graduated in May, Boman learned that his show, Three Rivers, would be on the CBS fall schedule, airing on Sunday nights at 9:00 P.M. 

Sloan Foundation program officer Doron Weber announced the two 2009 Production grant winners and the three-year renewal of the SCA grant beginning in September. The two production awardees are graduate production students Thenmozhi Soundarararajan and Isaac Ergas. Soundarararajan's proposal, Permeable, is about an inner city high school biology teacher who on the evening of a large immigrant march through the city, must deal with the sudden absence of his star pupil, an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant and decide whether to quit teaching and accept a more lucrative research position. Ergas's proposal Snow is about a physician in 1854 London who goes against the medical establishment and threats against him to establish that a cholera epidemic is spread by contaminated water and not passed through the air. The Sloan agreement stipulates up to two yearly $20,000 production grants, two $15,000 screenwriting grants and one $15,000 animation grant. A new part of the program will be the addition of an SCA Production faculty member to mentor and coordinate with the production grantees during all phases of their project. Production adjunct Dr. Thomas Miller will assume that responsibility for the next year. In addition to being an experienced writer, director and editor, he has an M.F.A. from production and is a medical doctor. 

The 12 Vietnamese filmmakers who arrived at USC on May 31, will finish their fourth week of classes and shooting their projects this weekend. They are shooting three short scripted video projects with the filmmakers assuming numerous crew positions, including director, assistant director, director of photography, sound recording and mixing, editing and production design. After several casting sessions, they began shooting their videos last week at several locations, including the roof of the downtown Baltimore Hotel as well as in a commercial loft in the same area. Other locations have included the Zemeckis stage, the Copy Center, Webb Tower, today at the UV Laundromat and coming up, in a San Fernando Valley house. The completed videos are scheduled to be shown at a specially arranged screening at the Motion Picture Academy on July 10. In addition to principal instructors production associate professor Michael Uno and production senior lecturer Chris Chomyn, there have been multiple editing sessions with production associate professor Norman Hollyn, sound design with production adjunct Lou Kleinman and Tom Walsh teaching production design. The group has also received special tours at the Warner Bros. studio, Rhythm & Hues Visual Effects studio, Panavision and a trip to the CineGear Expo. Three current SCA students, Phan Linh, Quynh Ha and Thai Ha, are acting as the interpreters. Current and recently graduated SCA students are assisting the instructors, including Amber Beard, Damian Horan and Andrew deJohn. Steven Nguyen has been responsible for handling much of the workshop's logistics. The workshop is sponsored by the Center for Educational Exchange with Viet Nam (CEEVN) and is underwritten by the Ford Foundation

Viola: Traveling Rooms of a Little Giant, made by Shih-Ting Hung, received the Gold Medal-Alternative at the Student Academy Awards (2008); Bronze Award – Fotokem Award at First Look; Bronze Award at the Kustendorf Film Festival in Serbia; Best Student Production at the Kinoki Film Festival in Mexico.

Abridged, made by Arjun Rihan, received the Imagination Award, MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival and the Golden Pencil Award — Best Animation in a Student Film, 2D Or Not 2D Animation Festival. The film was also exhibited at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Newport Beach Film Festival, TEDX USC, Short Film Festival of India, Heart of Gold International Film Festival in Gympie, Queensland, Australia, the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City, Nevada, the San Francisco Bay Area International Children's Film Festival and Love in a Paperbag, Brighton and Hove, England.

Tomboy, directed by Joanna Griebel, has been exhibited at the Treasure Coast Film Festival in Florida, Adobe First Frame, UC Davis Feminist Film Festival, Birmingham SHOUT 2009, Iowa Independent Film Festival and the Oxford International Film Festival.

Stranger's Poem, directed by Geer DuBois, at ArtsFest Film Festival and L.A. Shorts Film Festival.

Corrie Frances received several awards, including Best Creative Media Film at the Poppy Jasper Film Festival for her film, For the Masses; Best of Hazel Wolf at the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival for Conversing; Environment Art Award at the EarthVision Film Festival for Conversing; Best Female Filmmaker at the Poppy Jasper Film Festival for Conversing; Winner Best Short film at the Taos Mountain Film Festival for Conversing; Winner Best Film on Mountain Culture and Environment at the Wanaka Mountain Film Festival for Conversing, and Winner Best Student Short at the Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival for Conversing. This year, she also received a Sierra Arts Foundation Grant and a one-month's artist's residency with the Fundacion Valparaiso. In December 2008, she was awarded a three week artist's residency at the MacDowell Colony.

2009 Production M.F.A. graduate Gregg Helvey was announced as the Gold Medal Winner in the 36th annual Student Academy Awards on June 13. Presented at a special ceremony at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Helvey's short film, KAVI, tells of a poor Indian boy forced to work. Helvey also received a $5,000 cash award and the opportunity to spend a week with major writers and directors. The thesis film took two and one-half years to complete and as its writer and producer, he raised funds independently. In his acceptance speech, Helvey said of his film, "I wanted to create a film that was real and authentic and explore an issue (viewers) never considered or realized." He spent time in India scouting locations and speaking with children who work under similar conditions. Helvey also gives credit to Production instructor Bruce Block from whom he originally took a visual structure class and gave Helvey advice during the production. Helvey says that much of the $5,000 will go towards reducing his student loans. Other SCA students involved in the film included John Harrison as director of photography and Gentry Smith who did sound design. The awards were established in 1972 and past winners include Spike Lee, Robert Zemeckis, John Lasseter and Trey Parker. The story was carried by the Associated Press, CBC News, Washington Post and Variety.