![\"Griffin](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/05\/ByrdOSullivanAlix2.jpg\")
<\/a>Keith Brown, teaching professor in film production, says the end-of-semester screenings celebrate the students and the program, attracting family, friends, students and alumni of the program. \u201cThis is the event that all the students look forward to every semester,\u201d he says. \u201cThese films aren\u2019t just accomplishments for students in the class, but many students in lower-level classes come to see them with anticipation of what they will be able to do, and many of those students help out with these productions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nine FLM 445 shorts range in length from 5 to 20 minutes and include genres from sci-fi to comedy, from thriller to drama. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting because every semester is different,\u201d says Brown, who has been teaching advanced film production since joining äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ in 2007.<\/p>\n
Botelho\u2019s 20-minute film, \u201cJunkie,\u201d is about a drug addict who reaches his breaking point and finds help from the police officer who arrests him for shoplifting. \u201cAlthough most of the story is fictional, its heart and soul are based on a true story from a family member who\u2019s in law enforcement,\u201d says Botelho, of Fairhaven, Mass<\/strong>. \u201cAs he described the way he arrested a man stealing from a store, I could see the scene play in my head already.\u201d<\/p>\n Griffin Alix \u201920, of Southington, Conn<\/strong>., wrote and directed \u201cBlackbile,\u201d a pseudo-documentary inspired by the Jonestown massacre in 1978 when the Rev. Jim Jones induced followers to commit \u201crevolutionary\u201d suicide. \u201cI knew I would want to make a horror film,\u201d says Alix, a film\/media and public relations major. \u201cI\u2019ve been heavily invested in the genre since I first started seriously watching movies.\u201d<\/p>\n Botelho and Alix were among the seven students selected at the start of the semester to direct their own scripts, projects that joined two class productions. Many of the students crew on several of the productions, taking on the countless jobs needed to make a film. And some retake the class to try their hand at new roles or perfect skills.<\/p>\n After weeks of preparation \u2013 choosing scripts, troubleshooting possible problems, casting actors, securing locations \u2013 the student film crews began shooting on location in November. Then, in just short weeks, the students went into post-production, editing rough cuts, critiquing and polishing their films for screening.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of their weekends by mid-semester are taken up with these movies,\u201d says Brown. \u201cThey\u2019re really going all over the place to cast their films and find real locations to shoot. The fact this can all be done in one semester really blows my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Botelho, a double major in film and business management, worked on \u201cJunkie\u201d for a good 20 hours a week during the semester. Before that, she spent months writing and rewriting the screenplay. The script finally came together when she changed the point of view from the officer to the drug addict. \u201cIt seemed to give the story more importance,\u201d says Botelho. \u201cAlong the way, I realized that many people can relate to this struggle because of the growing drug epidemic. If I can give just one person a sliver of hope with this film, it\u2019ll make it all worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n The most hectic stretch was the three days of filming. Botelho and her crew shot on location at six sites in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She had hired several actors from New York and had to arrange their travel and lodging. \u201cMaking the entire filming schedule and coordinating dozens of moving parts was a lot of pressure and the most intense test of mental agility,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n As for most of the films, Alix ran a crowdfunding campaign to finance his film, \u201cBlackbile.\u201d Luckily, he says, his costs weren\u2019t as large as some of the projects. His actors, many secured through a casting website, worked for free, and the locations he chose were also free.<\/p>\n But production wasn\u2019t without its hurdles. Confirmation to film at the Whispering Pines Conference Center on the W. Alton Jones Campus didn\u2019t come through until just days before filming, and extras in the cult meeting scene presented some headaches. But both worked out.<\/p>\n \u201cVery few production classes allow you to dedicate an entire semester to just one or two projects,\u201d says Alix, who also appeared as a masked murderer in another of the student films. \u201cHaving this amount of time allows students to really flex their strengths and dial down on any one aspect of production. My biggest take-away from the course is how many moving parts there are to making a film, and there\u2019s no such thing as planning too far ahead. This course absolutely made that point clear.”<\/p>\n After the screenings, Alix plans to submit \u201cBlackbile\u201d in a number of film festivals geared toward horror films, and Botelho says she will submit \u201cJunkie\u201d to festivals around the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Dec. 5, 2019 \u2013 Alyssa Botelho \u201920 is pretty sure she still has a note from her 4-year-old self telling of her plans to be a writer someday. The dream changed to screenwriter as she got into movies in middle school, and writer-director when she started making films in high school. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,18],"class_list":["post-75235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-harrington-school-of-communication-and-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}