It doesn't take a Spielberg or even a "Project Greenlight" to make a film these days. It may just take a trip to Miner Hall, where the Experimental College is at the disposal of any would-be Hitchcock, Coppola or Scorsese at Tufts.
Or a would-be Wes Anderson, for that matter.
Citing "Rushmore" (1998) as his favorite movie, senior economics major Dan Roe is, despite his parents' nudging, first and foremost a Communications & Media Studies (CMS) film studies minor. With his senior project film in pre-production stage and a submission to the prestigious Ivy Film Festival in the works, Roe is just one of a growing number of students who are starting to take advantage of the burgeoning film program here at Tufts and the larger growing trend of student filmmaking.
Dubbing film studies the new English major for indecisive undergrads looking to channel their creative energies, Roe recognizes the mounting popularity of film studies on the Tufts campus and at other colleges across the country.
"I probably heard this in class," said Roe, "but I heard somewhere that 'to be literate today is not just to be well-read but to be versed in film too.' And we're such a visual culture now that kids are just really attracted to that."
History of the World, Part I
Once no more than a few cameras and a class or two, film study and practice at Tufts has grown from a small experiment and glorified video club in the 1970s to, in 2001, a bona fide minor through the Communications and Media Studies Department, replete with its own media lab, equipment, and faculty.
Professor Julie Dobrow, director of CMS, said that she has found student interest in filmmaking and CMS in general grow continually in her 10 years in the department. Associate director Susan Eisenhauer said she has noticed the trend as well.
Just five years ago, 48 students graduated as Communications and Media Studies minors. Today that number has roughly doubled, with close to 100 students currently set to graduate with the minor in May, according to records kept by the department. In 2005, there were 13 senior projects related to critical or practical film study (that is to say, papers about films or actual film works), the highest number in the past five years - quite a leap from the three made in 1998.
Interest in filmmaking is also reflected by the growing demand for the courses that constitute the recently dubbed "TuftsFilmWorks," a collection of Professor Howard Woolf's Making Movies and Advanced Filmmaking classes and the CMS required senior project class. This semester, Woolf, the associate director of the Ex College, had roughly 49 students express interest in "Making Movies," a class capped at 16. In order to choose the enrollment he sent prospective students a questionnaire and preliminary assignment, the equivalent to the legendary "pitch," to which 35 students responded.
Once 16 students received the proverbial green light from Woolf, they received clearance to use Tufts' in-demand equipment to film and edit their projects. Though Woolf would like to allow more rental of the cameras and accessories, often the resources can't support the demand. "We all suffer from this problem: that we have millions of hours of movies in our heads and we can see every scene up until the last, and we just leap over the process," said Woolf.
The experiences of other Ex College professors echo this sentiment. Said Dobrow, "What I can tell you is that demand [for CMS courses] far outstrips our ability to meet it." Dobrow noted that many CMS courses filled up so quickly that professors such as Woolf had to turn students away. "There is simply an enormous student demand for communication classes of all sorts."
The enrollment maximum alleviates problems created by the limited equipment in The Rice Media Center. Located in Halligan Hall, it provides blossoming student filmmakers with 20 computers arranged as dual stations. These 10 workstations with two separate projects on each allow for the production of more than 20 student films a year. Woolf has been continually impressed with the skill of student filmmakers. "The best things about [the films] are the production values on editing and on audio. The weakest link is the acting," said Woolf with a laugh.
Regarding the partnership between student filmmaking and the Ex College, he's willing to take it slow. "It's easy to think big and expand, but I've seen other schools begin big programs and just implode," said Woolf.
School Ties
Senior Jessica Brauser has found that Tufts has been able to support her projects, as a student with and later a teaching assistant for Roberta Oster Sachs, and in completing a film as a senior project this semester. She also participated in the CMS Winternship program in Los Angeles through Schachter Entertainment, the company of Tufts alum Ted Schachter (LA'76) [see page 4].
"There's a lot of film opportunity here at Tufts," said Brauser. "I'm someone with very little background and experience, but now I'm doing all of these things. Tufts has provided me with everything."
Brauser is in the idea stage of the production process; she is currently seeking actors and subjects for a documentary or short film related to males and body image. The Child Development major hopes to use her film to captivate, then educate, a generation raised by television. "Film is a much more progressive way of reaching people," said Brauser. "Anyone who has a message or story to tell could benefit from learning to make films."
Though Brauser plans to use film as an educational tool, another student filmmaker aims for a slightly more traditional goal: the silver screen.
Though his post-graduation plan remains unclear, senior English major and CMS minor Jordan Levie wants to create feature-length films of the indie variety. An alum of Woolf's Making Movies, he has chosen as his senior project to film Kurt Vonnegut's screenplay "Fortitude," which Levie characterizes as a sci-fi black comedy.
While some might call an attempt to interpret Vonnegut just a little ambitious, Levie finds the work done by his peer filmmakers to be equally so.
"I wasn't ballsy enough to write an original script," said Levie. "I'm looking forward to seeing Tufts films. That's really impressive to me, coming up with [a film] from scratch."
Finished with an extensive pre-production process, Levie begins filming this weekend and will continue to film 12-hour days every weekend this month, using volunteer community actors and locations. And as for the somewhat pricier (i.e. not free) props and pieces of the set, he'll handle those with a $400 Undergraduate Research Grant from Tufts.
"There's a relatively large community at Tufts who want to make films and who will help you when you need help," said Levie. "I'll be helping on others' [films] when I'm not working on mine."
It doesn't even take a Film Studies minor to make a film; CMS minors in Mass Communications & Media Studies or Multimedia Arts who choose to film their senior projects account for a large portion of the student films made with Tufts equipment each year. Such is the case with Levie, who had been unaware of Film Studies when he began taking courses to fulfill the CMS minor.
Taking the long view on the future of Tufts filmmaking, Levie sees the trend continuing to grow, especially as the cost-effective, user-friendly, professional-looking digital technology has allowed many students to learn the practice during high school.
"Tufts is going to see, I think, in the next couple of years, an increasing number of passionate film people who maybe didn't know if they wanted to go to film school, but who definitely want to pursue filmmaking as their primary extracurricular," said Levie.
Senior Yeu Jin Yoon agreed with Levie, saying, "If you want to major in film, you don't come to Tufts." As an entering freshman, Yoon had her sights set on a pre-med undergraduate career, but soon found her classes unfulfilling.
She found gratification, however, when she enrolled in a course at the Museum School at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston entitled Super 8, a reference to the celluloid medium used in the experimental film class. Unlike the digital photo equipment used on the Tufts campus, Yoon said, "Celluloid has a different look to it. I don't know what it is exactly, but it's just a better quality."
Since her Super 8 class, Yoon simply dabbles in practical filmmaking courses when she feels the need, and the informality of the Tufts film program allows Yoon the flexibility to do so while engaging in other academic pursuits. But what will become of those first experimental shorts she made in the MFA class?
"Maybe you could make them into a music video?" Yoon said.
The Graduate
For those students who do make the full commitment to a film studies minor, there will be plenty of opportunity to do so after graduation. Of course, with Oscar
season now fully upon us, the average person tends to think of film studies as a discipline whose ultimate culmination ends with a little gold statuette, but not all roads lead to Hollywood.
In fact, one Tufts CMS minor's prospective film career has taken her very much in the opposite direction from her hometown of Los Angeles.
Senior Emi Norris, like Yoon, was unhappy during her first semesters at Tufts as she tried to pursue a degree in International Relations. "I realized I hated all my IR classes!" said Norris.
So how did she stumble upon film? Said Norris: "I always liked it [film], and then when I realized it could be a serious focus of study, I thought, 'Great!' I looked at the CMS list, and they were all the courses I'd gazed at longingly while I was trying to fulfill my IR requirements."
As a Spanish major and minor in CMS Mass Communications & Media Studies, Norris took on an internship at the fledgling foreign base of Columbia Pictures when she went abroad to Madrid last year.
"My experience is kind of particular in that it was with Columbia Pictures which is a big American studio, obviously, and it had just opened a new branch in Spain," said Norris. But due to the inexperience of the new staff, Norris was able to get an impressive amount of hands-on experience.
Following her internship experience, Norris's hands-on experience continued when she joined Oster Sachs' Making Films for Social Change class, in which she and three other students created a 10-minute environmental documentary on alternative fuel sources.
Now, with graduation on the horizon, Norris would like to get back into producing, ideally for another foreign branch of an American studio. She thinks her work in the CMS program at Tufts has given her a strong background to prepare her for such work.
"Having gone through the process...albeit on a small scale, you have a much better idea of what the actual technical process entails. And as a producer who's in charge of organizing everybody and putting an entire production team together...having done it yourself as a student on a small scale gives you a much better idea of what it takes [to make a movie]."
Though senior Leigh Simons' Tufts training will likely keep her closer to home than Norris' will, Simons is still choosing to put her film background to work well outside the realm of Tinsel Town.
More interested in documentaries than feature films, Simons, a political science major, fell into her other discipline before film studies. Said Simons, "I was seeing them [media and politics] as two very separate interests until I took Roberta Oster Sachs' class, Making Films for Social Change." In that class, taken during the 2004 presidential election, Simons and her partners tracked a Tufts Democrat and a Tufts Republican through the campaign.
As a result, said Simons, "I realized I'd be able to combine my two interests. The class kind of pulled every together for me." Her senior project for her CMS Mass Communications & Media Studies minor has a similar political theme, as Simons and fellow senior Marina Shaw profile the undergrad career of Tufts junior Scott Merrick, a student who doubles as a representative to the state legislature in his home state of New Hampshire.
When asked to comment on the popularity of film studies at Tufts even among students who don't pursue a film studies minor, Simons said: "I think there's more public awareness now about the media - both negatively and positively - and it's having an effect on people who want to change that."
With an impressive r?©sum?© including internships with NBC's "Dateline" and "Nightly News" programs, Simons is aiming for a career in broadcast news that will hopefully lead her to Washington D. C., where she can use her political science background to augment her reports. But she also notes that the foundation in film production that she built at Tufts will help her to achieve this goal.
"Assuming my life works out the way I want it to, it will be incredibly valuable having already experienced making my own film. Marina and I have to do everything [now, so] if I end up working for NBC or something, and I have to do one small section [of a broadcast], seeing the whole picture will be really valuable, everything that needs to go into it to put something on the air."
The World Is Not Enough
Like Levie, a few students do hope to follow Matt and Ben along that rocky path from Boston to Hollywood, and Tufts film students are not alone in this endeavor.
Levie noted the fascination of this generation as a whole with filmmaking.
"Film is something that feels mysteriously accessible to people," he said. "Everyone knows how to handle a camera to some degree."
Film programs across the country are mirroring CMS' growth in varying degrees, as evidenced by the parallel development of student film festivals, particularly on the East Coast.
Founded in 2001 by a pair of Brown University undergrads, the Ivy Film Festival now represents the largest student-run, student-fueled film festival in New England. By 2005, the IFF's applicant pool had more than doubled from the 150 submissions it began with at its inception, and those numbers stand to increase dramatically by this year's February 15th application deadline.
Slated for the weekend of April 7th to 9th, the IFF features a new twist this spring: for the first time, the IFF has opened its doors to international student filmmakers, and early predictions for the effect the decision will have on the caliber of submissions are hopeful.
When asked why the IFF decided to go global, festival publicity representative and Brown sophomore Jeff Howerton said, "Why not?," noting that diversity is a key factor in shaping the progression of film as an art form.
This spring, Tufts' own Daniel Roe will be one of the applicants hoping to find himself among the IFF finalists. From the 300 submissions last year, only 27 films were selected for screening during the festival weekend. So which of his film projects is Roe banking on? A 10-minute short entitled, "Martin Pilsudski, P.I."
As Roe pointed out, it doesn't hurt that the high-profile IFF draws equally high-profile guests from the film industry. Tim Robbins, Adrien Brody, Oliver Stone, and Wes Craven have all made appearances at the IFF in past years, but Howerton couldn't provide any hints as to this spring's anticipated lineup
As for his aspirations for "Pilsudski" at the IFF, Roe isn't necessarily in it to win it. "The prizes aren't what you're trying to get in [these festivals]; you're just sort of trying to get the honor of being in it...I mean, even [being] a contestant is huge."
