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The night is a celebration for the students in the capstone class, many of whom are seniors showing off their \u201cfinal and highest-production-quality\u201d movies at 溏心vlog免费B站, said Alexander Pretorius \u201923, this year\u2019s Film\/Media Excellence Award winner, a teaching assistant in the class, and director of photography on one of the films. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLots of people invite their families and friends and many alumni come back to watch the movies,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is also tradition for us to get dressed up red-carpet-style in tuxedos and ball gowns.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe end of the semester screening is very important because the students who are working on these semester-long films put in a lot of hard work on making them come to life,\u201d said Tommy Finston \u201923, who directed the documentary \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d with Logan MacDonald. \u201cPeople don\u2019t realize how much work it takes to make these films.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Students in the class take on all the jobs needed to produce a film, said Keith Brown, a professor in the Harrington School of Communication and Media. While there were 10 student directors for eight of the capstone films (two films had two directors), the rest of the class crewed on at least two films \u2013 taking projects from script review to screening in just one semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an enormous amount of work,\u201d said Brown, who co-taught the capstone class with Professor Nicholas Corsano. \u201cThese students put so much time into this one course and it\u2019s all condensed into one semester, which makes it even more challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The short flicks \u2013 all about 15 minutes in length \u2013 cover a wide range of topics and genres, including a documentary on injustices faced by the Narragansett Tribal Nation, a comedy about a person obsessed with a McDonald\u2019s Shamrock Shake, the story of a man caught in a twisted game show, and a spoof on a reality show based in Rhode Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing all the films have in common, though, is the willingness of the filmmakers to pull out all the stops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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For his film, \u201cApollonius\u2019 Bucket,\u201d Jonah Major \u201923 of Smithfield<\/strong> melded genres and media to tell the story of a fictional constellation, Apollonius\u2019 Bucket, whose story is passed down over generations. To show that span, Major\u2019s film moves from a silent comedy set in Ancient Greece that captures the creation of the constellation in black and white 16mm film, to an MGM-style musical filmed in 35mm color, to finally a faux commercial for Coca-Cola that was filmed digitally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve made a handful of student films \u2013 both on film and digital,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, this is definitely my most ambitious film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The musical segment alone was filmed overnight at an empty Lincoln Cinema World and included a crew of a dozen. \u201cWorking with this incredible crew in an otherwise empty movie theater at 1 a.m. was one of the craziest things I\u2019ve gotten to do in the film program,\u201d said Major, a major in film\/media and Japanese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To film the scene, Major and director of photography Pretorius rented a 35mm Arriflex LT camera, thanks to grants from the 溏心vlog免费B站 Center for the Humanities and Rhode Island PBS. The film was one of several supported by this program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe scene is in the style of golden age musicals — one of my favorite eras of film — so it required us to pull out all the stops,\u201d said Pretorius, of Warwick<\/strong>, a major in film\/media and English. \u201cWe rented an $80,000 film camera and dolly and used all the highest quality lighting equipment that we have in the Harrington School. It felt like working on a real set in a lot of ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Senior Allison Magnus, who wrote and directed the dark comedy \u201cCherry Pie,\u201d is nervous and excited for the first screening of one of her films. Magnus overcame numerous challenges while making the film \u2013 including shooting a period piece, finding a classic 1950s car \u2026 and handling visits by the police. Twice police came to the set \u2013 once as the crew filmed in a North Kingstown diner at 1 a.m. and then again during a night scene in a cemetery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA large group of students gathering around an old Buick at 10 p.m. in a graveyard apparently looked suspicious,\u201d said Magnus, a double major in film\/media and English from Long Island<\/strong>. \u201cThe police showing up became a running gag with our film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCherry Pie\u201d tells the story of Franny, a young woman who returns home for a funeral only to be asked by her estranged sister to help coverup the murder of her ex-boyfriend. The film is set in the late 1950s and Magnus, a fan of the era\u2019s music and aesthetics, wanted to capture that color and feel. One problem was finding a vintage car \u2013 which was eventually discovered a block from the film set. Another was the experience of digging a grave in a friends\u2019 backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCreating a short film isn\u2019t easy but it is one of the most fun experiences I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d said Magnus, who had a crew and cast of about 16. \u201cThe film is a little over 10 minutes long. It is certainly the most ambitious project I\u2019ve ever attempted. We faced many hurdles but with the help of an amazing crew and cast we produced a film I\u2019m very proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For their capstone project, directors Tommy Finston \u201923 and Logan MacDonald \u201923 went a different route \u2013 filming a documentary about the injustices faced by the Narragansett Tribal Nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their short film, \u201cIn Plain Sight,\u201d focuses on the violent 2003 \u201csmoke-shop raid,\u201d when dozens of Rhode Island state troopers raided the tribe\u2019s newly opened cigarette store on the Narragansett reservation. Members of the tribe and troopers were injured in the raid, which Narragansetts consider one of many racially motivated attacks on the tribe. For the documentary, Finston and MacDonald interviewed tribal councilman Randy Noka and his wife, Elder Bella Noka, who were arrested during the raid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI wanted to make this film because I have the opportunity to spread awareness with my capstone project,\u201d said MacDonald of Marshfield, Massachusetts<\/strong>, a major in film\/media and minor in creative writing. \u201cWe wanted to tell this history the way it should be told \u2013 by the people who were there and who carry this trauma every day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a child, Finston of Massapequa Park, New York<\/strong>, visited relatives in the Natoaganeg (Eel Ground) First Nation community in New Brunswick. But he didn\u2019t learn about their hardships until he started researching different indigenous peoples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy creating this documentary, I would like to bring awareness to the present-day experiences of the Narragansett people,\u201d said Finston, a major in film\/media. \u201cIt is important for our indigenous cultures to be known as part of today\u2019s world, for we are all still here, no longer infringed by the notion \u2018Kill the Indian, Save the Man.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finston and MacDonald hope to create a longer version of the 15-minute documentary from the hours of film they have shot. It would cover numerous issues across the years that the tribe has faced from the State of Rhode Island, Finston said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 11, 2023 \u2013 If simple or bare bones comes to mind when you think of short films, you\u2019ll be in for a surprise if you check out the end of semester film screenings in Edwards Hall on Friday, May 12. The night will showcase nine short films from 32 students in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":86093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86092","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\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86092"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86107,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86092\/revisions\/86107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}