Palmer: Hello, my name is Jeffrey Palmer and I’m an Associate Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts. I teach film and video production in PMA.
Palmer: This is an exciting time to be a part of film and video production as we’re expanding the curriculum adding new instructors and collaborating across the whole department.
Palmer: Film and video production falls under the PMA rubic for creative authorship, which develops students' creative and technical skills needed to create work such as narrative filmmaking, documentary filmmaking, animation, screenwriting, and other media forms.
Palmer: Let’s hear from other instructors in film and video production
Bunn:. Hello, my name is Austin Bunn and I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts. I teach screenwriting, screenwriting, history, and filmmaking classes in film and video production.
Bunn: In film and video production, we design courses that explore all aspects of pre-production, production, and post-production needed to be an independent filmmaker or to prepare students to enter the film industry.
Bunn: For example, some students have gone on to direct their own independent films and others have gone into the industry to become producers, editors, and screenwriters. In every case, our curriculum allows for exploration and creative develop in media.
Fowlkes: Hello, my name is Juanie Fowlkes and I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Screenwriting in the Department of Performing and Media Arts. I teach screenwriting classes, producing classes and television writing classes. Let’s take a closer look at how our curriculum works.
Fowlkes: Pre-production is a major aspect of filmmaking. We begin with storytelling. Good storytelling leads to good filmmaking. How do you create a script that transfers to the screen, how do you scout for locations, create production reports, or schedule?
Fowlkes: At PMA, we try to incorporate all these aspects into a comprehensive curriculum that leads students to become confident storytellers and producers.
Kim: Hello, my name is Doorim Kim and I am a lecturer in the Department of Performing and Media Arts. I teach production lab and cinematography classes. Let’s talk about the production and post-production curriculum.
Kim: In production courses we try to break down technical skills, such as directing, cinematography, lighting, scene design, sound design, and we further your conceptual skills in post-production, such as editing and animation.
Kim: We then create a showcase for all students to present their completed works on the big screen. Students later have the option of sending their film to a film festival or creating a portfolio for graduate programs.
Palmer: Whether you are a future documentary filmmaker, narrative filmmaker, or screenwriter, film and video production will provide a slate of courses that will allow you to explore and the freedom to create in this amazing, exciting, and energetic field of study.
Palmer: There are many ways students can find a creative path at PMA. We hope to see you all in the coming semester.
Kenny Aune:
Hello. My name is Kenny. I'm a senior here at Cornell University, where I studied performing and media arts and film production, and I minored in game design as well. I'm super passionate about horror movies. So recently I finished my honors Thesis project, which was a short horror satire film about how Gen Z would hypothetically react to an incoming alien apocalypse.
Doomscroll is a film about how I've observed Gen Z and really society in general deal with grief about, like the collective trauma of, like the ongoing world. There's lots of things that are really troublesome about everything you see in the news, everything you see online. And this film is a way of almost cathartically, or at least my attempt to represent that sort of like anxiety on screen. But also on top of that, it's a way to just make people hopefully have a good time. The intention of that film is to get go on to laugh a little bit. So even though the root of the film is something a little bit more emotional, I also want people to leave feeling like they giggled a little bit and enjoyed their 15 minutes of screen time.
I think my film production one and film production two classes really helped prepare me for the Doomscroll shoot. I felt like I had a decent background with gaffing, with camera work, with directing and so I think those production classes really helped me feel confident when I had to produce and lead my own set.
So Doomscroll is a project that was in the works for about a year and a half now. Last year, during my junior year, I started working with Professor Austin Bunn and Professor Jason Simms on coming up with a culmination project of all of the work I've done here at Cornell.
We began script writing in the spring of my junior year. Going into the summer, in the fall of my senior year, I actually studied abroad. So for a lot of the pre-production process, I did that from Europe, actually, but that was a lot of fun. I was still very coordinated with everyone here in Ithaca, I had my cast finalized, I had my crew finalized, locations were scouted, everything was set. So we shot the film in early February and March, and then I edited the film over the course about a month and a half, and it just screened last week, and I was really happy about the positive reception it had.
Peter Levine:
My name is Peter Levine. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and came to Cornell for track and field. I was originally going to major in environment and Sustainability. But film was always something I knew I wanted to pursue. And when other things weren't making sense and I got injured, running, I decided to pursue it more fully. I began writing the story about two years ago. I was in, Intro to screenwriting here, actually and originally the story was kind of this drama that was heartfelt, and it was about a boy running away from home and kind of serving as a surrogate son for this elderly couple and when I read it in class, everyone was terrified. They said, like, this is a horror you got to write it as a horror. So, I decided to lean into that during this pre-production phase, we were location scouting, looking for the stall exterior house. so basically driving around all of creation, in Ithaca, trying to find this place.
We were talking to the PMA scenic staff about building the set. PMA was more than happy to help me and give me resources and we pulled from a lot of mid-century esthetics, to kind of build almost a house that's been stuck in time, and what we created was a very unique space that I've never seen before It was simultaneously creepy, but also very cozy. And that was kind of what I was going for while writing the film and so once we had finished our design plans, Savannah Relos and the whole scenic department just took it and ran, and, it felt like I walked into the the Kiplinger one day, and it was a bunch of wood, that kind of looked like a house. And the next day I walked in. It was basically, the full fledged first floor of a house, which was so impressive.
We began shooting in February. It was a seven-day shoot. Three of those days were at our exterior location out in King Ferry. And, the other four of the days were in the set in the Schwartz Center and basically, it was a full time job probably even more. I know for those days, I didn't see the sun. The whole process was finding a way to balance a pre-professional environment while making this film and also, giving students a chance to work on this, and kind of shadow, the professional crew that that was working, and learn a lot about the filmmaking process, which was great.