And now, Our Feature Presentation
Film Students, their School, and their Screenings

by Kate Bloemker and Tim Johnson with William Huber

The carpeted steps muffle the filmmaker's approach to the podium at the front of Carlson Auditorium, after the lights come on and the applause tapers off. His film has just screened at the winter film festival, and now he must face the crowd of people who have just viewed his film. There are questions and comments from the audience-, the film can always be improved. There is a second applause, not as much as the first, and the next film begins. The filmmaker breathes a little easier. He has more work ahead of him, but as for today he has faced his peers and professors, and the verdict is good.

The Program: Its Home and its Future
RIT's School of Film and Animation (SoFA) is growing; in fact, it has outgrown its current space. "As our program has expanded and been successful, we've been able to acquire good equipment, great faculty, and the best students," said Howard Lester, Administrative Chair of SOFA, "but we really have no place to put them all."

The technical needs of SOFA today were hard to gauge at the beginning of its existence. Ten years ago, the film school was just a small offshoot of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, offering only a Bachelor of Science degree. About five years ago, SOFA broke off completely and became an independent school within the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, offering Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees as well as Master's degrees. In a short amount of time, it has evolved into one of the country's best film schools, with approximately 250 students in programs for Film and Video Production and Animation.

for time in the soundstage area and on the animation equipment, and there often are not appropriate spaces to hold classes. "Some classes are held in spaces that literally used to be closets," said Lester.

Needless to say, students, faculty, and staff were excited to hear that the School of Film and Animation will finally be getting its own unified space. The printing press area in the basement of Gannett will soon be vacated, and the area will be handed over to the Film school, a plan that has been in the works for several years. The animation lab will be the first to make the move to the expanded facilities, eventually followed by the equipment cage and the Film and Video Production program. Johnny Robinson, Chair of the Animation program, said that he hopes to begin the move this summer, in order to minimally disrupt student and faculty activities.

The space will eventually have graduate and undergraduate animation labs, multiple stop-action animation studios (the school currently has just one), an expanded equipment cage, more space for postproduction equipment, and bona-fide soundstages. Film and Video Production student and equipment cage employee Kim Roberts was thrilled to hear about the new facilities: "We're growing out of this comer. It's very crammed, and we could really use the space!"

Serious modifications to the space are needed to fulfill SoFA's needs. More powerful electric lines must be installed in order to meet the needs of a film production hub, and the ceilings are too high and the walls are too far apart to be used effectively. "Our biggest problem," said Robinson, "is finding the money to divide the walls. You can't set up a studio in what is essentially a giant barn and expect it to work."

The move downstairs may not be the end to changes in the SoFA's facilities. It is hoped that enough funds will be gathered to create a permanent shop to build sets for student films. However, Lester said that the real commitment to expanding the program's property would be to build an addition to the existing building. The project, which is expected to cost about $11 million, is still many years down the road, but the program feels "very positive about it."

Throughout the planning process, the School of Film and Animation has had the help of an industrial advisory board, composed mostly of SoFA alumni who are now working in the film industry. The board has given advice not only on the subject of fundraising, but also on how to make sure students know how to take advantage of the opportunities that exist after graduation. "As technology evolves, we need to be aware of new careers in the industry," said Adrianne Carageorge, Chair of the Film and Video Production program.

The School of Film and Animation is definitely geared towards change and improvement, and the new facilities are only a beginning. The school, like the film industry itself, is constantly evolving with the technical and artistic desires of society. Robinson echoed the sentiment of almost everyone in the School of Film and Animation: "We want to plan for the future."

into the documentary and fiction subsets, while the animation set mainly focuses on 3D computer animation and traditional 2D drawn animation. However, there are many other varieties of study foci for each -- more than it is possible to mention here.

Live action fiction students write or collaborate on a script for their film, and then go through the process of finding appropriate actors for the different parts, gathering a crew, and finally producing their film. Documentary students find a subject that interests them, gather a crew, and film it, with the goal of bringing the subject to the attention of the audience as intimately as possible. 3D computer animation students also come up with a story, and then focus on building sets and characters in cyberspace and rendering out the individual frames. Traditional or 2D animation students also do a tremendous amount of character development artistically, while visually creating the story in a similar fashion as the computer animators. Experimental film students attempt to manipulate their chosen media to show the audience something they've never seen before.

The Screenings
While all SoFA students work very hard on their projects throughout their years at RIT, it is perhaps the seniors who feel the most stress as the winter quarter draws to a close. This is when the senior thesis projects are due, in time for a public showing at the annual winter screenings.

This event is one of the most important stages of a film student's senior thesis development, as it is the opportunity to show a year's work in front of a live audience. Not only does the winter film festival provide the student filmmaker with the valuable reaction of peers and members of the RIT community, it also allows for both positive and negative constructive criticism from attending faculty members.

Each senior thesis student spent a year working on a project in the area of study that he or she was most interested in. With such a varietv of interests, the screenings always have a diverse range of subject matter.

This year, SOFA started the festival on February 22, screening student works all day for six consecutive days. While films from students of all year levels are shown, it's a general feeling that the most emphasis is placed on the screening of the senior projects.

trains that cover thousands of miles, Danis focused on a short line railroad, which covers a regional area and might only have 25 miles of track.

Danis spent a great deal of time over the past year at the railroad station with a group of workers, doing capturing what they do on video. "It's such a routine thing, and it's just a job [for them]," said Danis. "When most people think of trains, they get wrapped up in the romanticism of the whole thing, but when you go down there you see that these are just regular guys doing a job. It's not this exciting world that you might envision."

Short Line, which received mixed reviews from the audience, was one of the longer films screened during the film festival, running for a full hour. "It's not like we chose to make this film an hour long-it kind of became an hour long," he said, as he explained the need for enough time to learn what each of the workers was like, while not boring the audience in the process.

Danis said that he really likes the Film program at RIT. "There's a lot of faculty that I really like and they're real sharp about making films and talking about film. I like the fact that they're really giving everyone some good criticism. I think that's important."

Untitled
Todd Martin, in search of a muse for his senior project, traveled to Russia and stumbled across something that inspired him creatively. "I found a bunch of single negatives of 35mm film. I thought that maybe they were involved in a house fire," said Martin. "I felt that maybe it was a sign that I was supposed to make my thesis about it."

Martin scanned in the negatives that he found and put them together in a QuickTime sequence. "The images seemed pretty random. There's a woman making a hand gesture, some ducks and a farm, and since everything is taken out of context it really leaves it up for interpretation," said Martin.

The untitled mixed-media piece consisted of a combination of 16mm film and digital video footage that Martin shot and combined with the found images. He received help in learning about using the different formats and Photoshop, but did all of the cutting and editing himself.

While Martin is happy with the way that his thesis turned out, he admitted that the film program itself didn't fulfill all of his expectations. "I'm not very fond of the program," he said. "It's misleading. There's a lack of direction, and most of the people just starting aren't aware of what they're in for." He went on to say that everyone involved in the program needs to be more critical of each other's work, and that the professional advisors need to tell students whether or not they have a future in the industry. "I didn't realize that this program wasn't right for me until it was much too late. I don't really want to work in the film industry. I'd like to travel around the world, find interesting things and make documentaries on them. I know that there's a lot of interesting stuff out there that is really interesting but no one thinks to put it on film."

Lessons in Customer Service
For a waitress, work usually involves coping with some difficult situations, a variety of challenges, and downright weird people. In an effort to show the audience what it's like in the world of food service, Nicole Ferrari screened her 18-minute live action senior thesis, Lessons in Customer Service. The fiction film is about a waitress' last night on the job, and, in accordance to Murphy's Law, everything that could go wrong, does. The main character deals with sexual harassment, rude customers, and everything in between. The film received many laughs from the audience, as they could all relate in some way to the main character's troubles.

"I think its great when people come up to me and tell me they've been through everything that my main character goes through when they were servers," said Ferrari. "I think I got exactly what I expected in terms of audience reaction. Some people really liked it and some people have other opinions."

She attributes a lot of the success of her film to the great crew and actors she worked with. "There were some shots that failed, but I think that I had some great crew members. They were all great help and they did an awesome job," she said. "I think that my characters did a lot of improvisation that translated well on screen."

Over the past four years, a lot has changed within the film school, and according to Ferrari, it is obvious that the level of quality has risen, as the standards for excellence continue to grow. "It's a very self-motivated department and you have to make things happen for yourself,"she said.

Ingredients
Imagine for a moment that you are being chased through a supermarket by a group of angry, maniacal shopping carts, and the only question you keep asking yourself is what the ingredients are in the food you're running past. This is exactly what life is like for the main character in Everett Religioso's 3D computer animation thesis, Ingredients.

"I just thought the premise of my story was pretty funny," said Religioso. "I mean, you would expect that the man would be more concerned with the shopping carts than the ingredients of the food, but that's just not the case." Religioso had to teach himself a lot in order to create some of the animation his story called for. "Throughout the program, they teach you the very basics, and then you have to go out there and teach yourself the rest," he said. "There weren't any really big problems during my process, but for some of the big scenes with the explosions and the products, I had to teach myself the dynamics. But, I don't really mind teaching myself things." Religioso was happy with his screening, saying that he really couldn't have asked for more. One comment from Howard Lester was that "it shows how much [he] put into it."

Religioso is happy with the film and animation program at RIT "I would have liked to have started on computer animation a little earlier," said Religioso, "[But] studying film really helps for making a good story The school gives you a lot of freedom in making your projects. They kind of say 'Do whatever you want and it's up to you to make something good,' so it's really about how much effort you put into it."

Hours upon hours of effort have been expended, and finances have been depleted. The cast and crew has arrived, performed, and vanished, leaving behind only remnants of torn costumes and wadded tape. The equipment, functional and sometimes not, has been requested, granted, and returned several times over. Cataloguing, editing, and dubbing, have been completed several times, and the project now rests on a cassette or a disc. The audience has come, sat very still, laughed, cried and left. Now, the filmmaker is alone with his work. This is the life of a Film student.