Friday, January 20, 2017
Going Sundancing
Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama: The lights at this year’s Sundance Film Festival will be especially bright for Carnegie Mellon University.
Of the 16 feature films competing in the U.S. Dramatic category — selected from over 2,000 submissions — four of them star young School of Drama alumni and a fifth features a CMU faculty member as an executive producer.
CMU’s strong showing at this year’s festival is “a testament to the high caliber of their training,” said Peter Cooke, head of the School of Drama.
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5 comments:
Seeing successful CMU alumni is not only exciting to see, but also comforting (if they can make it maybe I can too). This article illustrates how CMU students and alumni have a uniquely versatile skill set. One sure tell of a Carnegie Mellon student, previous or current, is their ability to take on several roles and positions at once or within a small period of time. It can be seen in the real world: Mitchell Edwards from the article is a perfect example, explaining that he "had little downtime between shooting "Burning Sands" and "Roxanne Roxanne," two different features just from this article. This can also be seen right here on campus: students on and off stage take on countless roles and positions during playground week, preparing for several designs or characters at a time. The environment that CMU creates to train and educate its students is a perfect place to practice getting into the nitty-gritty of a part while still being able to dive right into another position with ease.
It’s wonderful to see how CMU alumni are making a splash in the film industry. I have a background in film and I’m interested to see if I could potentially get a job working for Sundance. I don’t think I’d like to actually make the films, but to plan and manage the festival itself seems like an interesting gig. I’m impressed by the fact that one of the CMU performers was able to land the lead in one of the films right off the bat. The fact that she is wearing prosthetics makes the job even more challenging. I’d like to know if she’s wearing arm or leg prosthetics, and how exactly those are made in order to look real without amputating the performer’s limbs. Probably CGI, I’d imagine, but I also think there are some other kind of practical effects in place as well. I’ll have to follow this production carefully.
It’s always great to read about other successful Carnegie Mellon University students, that ¼ of the qualifying films contained Carnegie Mellon University alum in their creation. It gives me hope in the prospect of one day digging myself out of student loans. While it was enjoyable to read quotes from the actors themselves and the article was humorously written it just feels empty. Like another article that just supplies a list of information instead of telling a story. I was hoping to learn more about the Sundance Film Festival itself instead of just a handful of the participants. Despite that author did a good job of turning a list into a narrative that I’m sure drove ad revenue for the website. Good job Nicholas Ducassi, good job.
I’m glad to see that CMU is so well represented at Sundance Film Festival. It’s sort of insane to think that some of these alumni graduated less than a year ago, and yet here they are at one of the largest film festivals in the country. I think’s that’s one of the major pros to these types of events. Instead of casting for a commercial movie where it’s big name after big name, these film festivals give directors a chance to go in a different direction. Some of the films will feature big name stars, but many of them won’t. It’s an important step in exposure and experience for young actors. The fact that some of those young actors are CMU alumni is a perk. Although, this article only mentioned alumni actors in the US Drama category. It would be nice to see a list of non-actors working with Sundance this year (as directors, script supervisors, etc).
Sundance Film Festival is by far my film festival – the vast majority of the films that I recognize as having made a large impact upon how I understand life and the people around me (I highly recommended watching Swiss Army Man for the incredible cinematography, score, and message) have at some point been featured in the festival or received funding through it. I am elated that CMU is so pervasively represented in this year’s festival. I hope that the films the alumni are featured in are as impactful and important to our understanding of self and culture as I hope they are. I wish this article provided a more in depth description of the four films or mentioned whether or not there were non-actor/director graduates working on any of the films. Sundance has an incredible partnership with Dolby and some of my favorite film scores have emerged from that grant. It would be exciting to hear whether or not CMU alumni have ever taken advantage of that opportunity. I look forward to seeing these films.
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