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Nothing is more vibrant than Vassar’s campus on a crisp fall day. Besides the picturesque setting there are students speed-walking to class, professors lazily walking their dogs, groundskeepers and staff working diligently, and joggers and cyclists galore. But look hard enough and you’ll notice something else interspersed amongst the general bustle: students armed with movie cameras.
Student filmmakers are a common sight at Vassar, whether they’re shooting a scene by Sunset Lake, on the quad, in the College Center or outside the All Campus Dining Center (ACDC). It is therefore a bit of a conundrum that although student filmmakers are themselves visible, the films they shoot are seemingly hard to find.
“I mean, I’m only a freshman,” said Kate Warrick. “But I haven’t seen anything prominent at all [in terms of student film].”
Charlie Pane, a senior film major, feels the same way.
“I wouldn’t say that it is all that visible on campus,” said Pane about student-made movies. “Before I became a film major, I didn’t even hear anything about it except from a friend or two who were doing film production classes.”
This semester has seen a dearth of student films presented formally on campus. There has only been one showcase thus far: Vassar Filmmaker’s 12-hour film project movie screenings in late September. The screening was part of a project in which seven groups of students shot a five-minute film in 12 hours or less, edited it within a week and then displayed their work at Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film on September 25.
The 12-hour film project was part of an effort to attract new members to Vassar Filmmakers, the only Vassar Student Association (VSA)-certified organization that serves the needs of filmmakers. The group was created in 2006, but in three years it has managed to provide students with accessible means to make movies. Members have easy access to high-quality film equipment, workshops and editing equipment.
The organization’s president and creative director Kyle Porter ’10 said that increased exposure of films is a goal for the group this year.
“I think part of it is just the fact that we’re a relatively new organization,” said Porter ’10 of the club’s limited publicity. “We’re still seen as a bunch of weirdos.”
Besides the 12-hour film project, Vassar Filmmakers has also kept up campus appearances campus with 21st Century Fit, which was not so much a showcase as it was experimental theater. The other major event for the Filmmakers was the screening of Porter’s own short film, “Facial,” immediately before Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) Film League’s presentation of Coraline 3D on Halloween night at Blodgett Hall.
At the behest of ViCE Film League director Max Kutner ’10, Porter filmed the darkly humorous and bizarre short during October Break.
Porter’s minimalist vignette is a dialogue of the discontent, a single scene involving a girl and her mother lounging and drinking. The film was recently submitted to a film competition called Live by the Creed, which is sponsored by the Independent Film Channel and the upcoming video game Assassin’s Creed 2. There is a $10,000 grand prize for the winner, along with a copy of the game and a video game console of their choice.
“I found out about the contest, and thought why not?” said Porter. “And I got to see a nice crowd reaction at the screening, which helped. There was one joke that went on really, really long, and no one laughed. So I re-edited it and improved everything before putting together the final product.”
Vassar Filmmakers are trying to extend their reach beyond Vassar by submitting movies to similar competitions and festivals. Festival submission is something on which Porter has tried to collaborate with the Film Department.
“We use our resources as much as possible, as much as any other organization,” said Porter. “But there is still a great unknown factor [with Vassar Filmmakers].”
A different film ensemble on campus has had less trouble with visibility. Fourth Floor Main is an online video series created by College Relations Consultant Julia Van Develder. The show is an homage to the television comedy The Office, in that it profiles a fellow group from Main Building as the TV show follows a group of disgruntled office workers. The series was created after Van Develder interviewed a real fellow group from the fourth floor of Main House, and came up with the idea to create a series based on their stories. Van Develder and director Yang Miller cast actors, and the subsequent ensemble began brainstorming ideas for the series.
“Honestly, the students involved had a huge amount of input,” said Ben Palacios ’11, an actor in the series, in an e-mailed statement. “It was a very exciting and demanding project to be a part of.”
Palacios played the role of Derek Holiday, whose doomed long-distance relationship is the subject of the serie’s first episode. The second episode dealt with the supposed haunting of the group’s hallway by the ghost of Matthew Vassar, and the third centered itself on a cameo appearance by none other than Lisa Kudrow ’85. Kudrow is best known for her role on the popular TV show “Friends,” and agreed to act in the episode when she visited campus for a meeting of the Board of Trustees, of which she is a member. Fourth Floor Main is considerably more visible than other film projects because of its direct ties to the College. The latest episode was featured on Vassar’s homepage, and the group’s website is a subdomain of Vassar’s website.
“Its visibility is a given, since it was put together by College Relations, and student-led productions at Vassar generally get less press than department productions,” said Crystal Tung ’11 in an e-mailed statement, who plays the role of Alex Leung.
Tung also stressed that the project was the brainchild of College Relations, but students are the creative forces behind the production.
“We had as much of a say in what went on in the series as did anyone else, if not more, because it was meant to capture dorm life, which we, as students, experience much more thoroughly than any College Relations admin does,” said Tung.
In contrast to College Relations, the Film Department itself sometimes struggles to garner recognition for students’ work. They do manage to attain some level of visibility for the projects of film students.
“The Film Department has an administrative assistant who sends our student films out to festivals,” said Professor of Film and Ken Robinson. “We hold screenings at the end of each semester to screen the selected student projects to the campus at large.”
The majority of the projects that will be highlighted at the department screenings will be senior project documentaries. Various film majors are working on five different projects, covering a multitude of subject matter relevant to the Poughkeepsie community. One is about a Satanist who lives in Poughkeepsie, another is about chess players who earn money playing in Washington Park, and a third deals with a program that helps fight poverty through the sport of fencing. The ideas for the various topics come from students, which professors helped develop.
“Students are always asked to come up with and develop their own ideas,” said Robinson. “As teachers, part of our responsibility is to get students to think things through and to explore as many sides of an issue as time permits. Both theory and practice follow this model.”
These senior projects are in fact a contentious matter with students, and seem to be representative of a larger issue with production classes altogether.
“I do feel that we get a complete education in the various areas of film production,” said film
major Emelia Mendieta ’10. “That being said, I think we could also use a little more specific training in some areas we might be interested in. One of the voiced opinions of production students is that our training in sound and sound design isn’t as in-depth as it could be.”
Even people who have taken their leave of Vassar often look back negatively at their experiences with the Film Department. Vassar alum Brian Paccione ’09 was the director of Vassar Filmmakers last year, and has continued honing his craft as a graduate student at Columbia University. “In one sense, Vassar was absolutely amazing,” said Paccione in an e-mailed statement. “The resources are unparalleled. The opportunity to shoot on 16 millimeter film and not pay a single cent is priceless, unheard of. Students need to take advantage of this.”
“That being said,” continued Paccione, “I had to teach myself how to make films. Vassar gave me the technical resources, but not the education on how to direct films: how to use the camera as a narrator and how to deal with actors. Vassar lacks a production teacher.”
Paccione has recently received attention for his short film, “Heartlands,” which he filmed in his senior year at Vassar. The movie is about a strongman and a clown, presumably brother and sister, who live in a broken down car in the backwoods of middle America. The short is a wordless exploration of alienation, family and escape. It has screened at a variety of film festivals, and made the cut of top ten movies at the Columbia University National Undergraduate Film Festival.
“I will say that my film teacher and many film classmates absolutely hated ‘Heartlands’,” said Paccione. “They said it was pretentious and egotistical. I didn’t listen to them and made it anyway, and now it is in festivals and winning awards. It is one of the things that got me into graduate school.”
The department may have flaws, and overall exposure of student film may be inadequate. But student-created film at Vassar continues to be an art as vibrant as the community it embodies, if the works of Porter, Paccione and Fourth Floor Main are any indication. Paccione encourages filmmakers to continue pushing limits with their craft. “Make films that talk about and show what everyone is afraid to hear and see,” said Paccione. “The sissies will be scared, but the really talented ones, the ones who will get you a job, who are going to make you famous, will appreciate them.”
7 comments
"In contrast to College Relations, the Film Department itself sometimes struggles to garner recognition for students’ work. They do manage to attain some level of visibility for the projects of film students."I would love to know the authors’ definition of struggle. Does struggle include getting films into competition at Tribeca film festival, one of the most prestigious American festivals? I would LOVE to have that struggle, as an '06 filmmaker did with her documentary, "The Common Sense Farm." I'm so glad Vassar has been "struggling" to garner recognition for my senior documentary, which to date has played at seven film festivals and won Best Student Documentary at the International Family Film Festival. And my documentary is barely a third as successful as other films from my year that have racked up the awards nationally. How did we get into these festivals? Through Vassar's Film Department, that paid our fees and made all the entries, saving us hundreds of dollars and pushing our work onto the festival world.I'd say that goes above and beyond "some level of visibility." If Tribeca, Ivy Film Fest, International Family Film Fest, Connecticut FF (which had an entire PROGRAM of Vassar documentaries) and Coney Island Film Fest (just to name a few) illustrate a paltry effort on the part of the department to get us exposure, I'd love to see what the author considers a success.In response to the criticisms made on curricular film at Vassar, I reach this point with great ambivalence. There is an argument that two years (vs four, as is available at NYU etc) of production hinders the development of filmmakers, putting us at a disadvantage in the cinematic community in terms of skills. Do I wish I could have taken four years of production at Vassar? Absolutely. But having seen an awful lot of student film over the past year (as I’ve taken my films to festivals) I have to say even junior filmmakers at Vassar knock the socks off the competition in terms of storytelling, performance and technique, time and time again. The production curriculum underwent an ENORMOUS transformation over the past few years with the addition of several new classes and faculty. It’s still finding a foothold. However, I will say that the dedication of the Film department staff to the development of its students is unparalleled. In what other department do the students have their professors’ cell numbers in case a question comes up outside of the classroom? In what other department would a professor work with students to develop extracurricular projects for no further incentive than the betterment of that student as a filmmaker? I think the film faculty at Vassar have gone above and beyond in their dedication to cultivating talent, but in this cultivation comes the understanding that constructive criticism is meant to better the student (and as a VERY small minority of Vassar students have had professional production experience, everyone is still a student learning from a more experienced teacher.) I would be interested to poll other students who took the same course load as Brian Paccione and see how many of them shared his sentiments exactly. This does not invalidate Brian's experience, however, one person's perspective does not speak for the impression of the department left on all its students, and the author would do well to recognize this. Having one representative for each facet presents the journalist as lazy and uninterested in investigating the broader truth of the story s/he is presenting. I would be more than happy to speak to the author of this article, or to refer him to any number of Vassar Film alums, who might have very different impressions of the program.
Of course, then it was called "La Strada" and he was using the nom de plume "Federico Fellini."
But it is a beautiful film.