When you walk into room 244 of the Umphrey Lee Center on Wednesdays at 5 p.m., you might find yourself chatting with the next Quentin Tarantino or watching a student film directed by the next Sofia Coppola. This mingling of artists is the SMU Student Filmmakers’ Association, a student organization dedicated to the art of filmmaking.
On their Web site, people.smu.edu/sfa, the Student Senate-supported group describes itself as “passionate individuals enthralled by the art of filmmaking. As such, we have the privilege of meeting with other creative individuals and working to create films.” The group is open to students of all majors and you don’t necessarily have to want to make films to join. Many students show up just to watch and enjoy movies.
SFA hosts regular screenings of unusual or obscure films intended to broaden the horizons of the members. “They get people to think about film in new and different ways,” says SFA President Nathan Harris. “It’s part of our interest in celebrating the medium of cinema..”
Each semester, the group produces at least one film. Students control the entire process from idea to actualization. Members submit screenplays and the group decides which script to produce. Members also volunteer themselves for important crew positions such as director, producer, director of photography, production designer, and post production supervisor. The entire group votes on which members should fill these positions. The SFA officers, with the aid of the elected crew heads, decide who will occupy the remaining crew positions.
The 16mm production is filmed over the course of a weekend. This semester’s film will be “Lucid,” written by Matt Anderson, a member of the group who is not a Cinema Television major. SFA plans to film the movie Nov. 14 through Nov. 16.
SFA’s faculty advisor, Professor Mark Kerins, says, “Overall, it’s a much closer approximation to the real-world industry than class projects since they have to develop, plan, shoot, and post-produce everything themselves, including finding the right people for each job and allocating resources such as time, money, and the crew.”
While SFA is not officially tied to the Cinema-Television division of the Meadows School of the Arts, many professors enjoy getting to see their students in action as filmmakers through the organization.
“My involvement in SFA is strictly as an observer,” says CTV professor Sean Griffin. “This year, I’ve been making almost all of the meetings, mainly to see what my students are doing creatively. As a CTV professor that teaches the history and criticism courses, I don’t often get to see the creative work that our majors do, so I am trying this year to be ‘proactive’ in keeping up with their projects.”
In addition to producing films, SFA hosts a student film festival each semester, which showcases the university’s best student work. The festivals are free and take place at a local movie theater. The festivals show screenings of films made by SMU students, including films made for CTV classes, by SFA, and anything else shot by SMU students who submit their work.
The spring festival usually invites a prominent filmmaker to visit and speak or participate in a Q&A session. Past guests have included filmmakers John Waters and Darren Aronofsky.
In addition to creating their own films, members of SFA also create their own fun. They periodically hold events like the “24 Hour Video Race” in which students break into groups and are assigned content such as a theme, a prop, a location, and lines of dialogue that they must incorporate into a five minute video. The project must be written, shot, and edited in a 24 hour time frame. The groups often get the assignment at midnight and the movie is due at midnight the following night.
SFA President Nathan Harris says it’s a “fun event that forces people to be creative and produce a movie. Sometimes these projects are surprisingly well made and other times they are just flat out hilarious. The main attraction to the 24 Hour Race is to have a finished film, viewed by an audience, and if it isn’t perfect, which is usually the case, then you already have the built in excuse of, ‘Well, we only had a weekend.'”
In regards to the benefits of the SFA, Professor Kerins says, “For CTV majors, the group is a chance to make movies outside the classroom framework, which gives beginning students the opportunity to work on bigger projects and learn from the older students. It gives the more advanced students the opportunity to work with a bigger crew, sometimes with different equipment than what SMU has, and to work with a larger budget than most of their class projects use.”
“For non-CTV majors,” he adds, “it’s a chance for people who may have an interest in moviemaking as a hobby or side project to get on set and be involved with filmmaking without the entry barriers of classes. Some students in particular majors, like theater or music, find a new way to use their talents that may not be readily available within their major but helps them develop the skills they will use post-college in their careers, and helps build their demo reels with a greater variety of work.”
Ryan Glenn, vice president of Meadows Ambassadors for Prospective Students, attended a recent meeting and found the atmosphere “informal but friendly.”
“There was a lot of energy and camaraderie,” said Glenn.
“The group is beneficial for both majors and non majors because it opens up the door of supported film creation to any student interested in the process, regardless of their major,” said Glenn. “Thus, the film process is more varied and no talent is wasted because of exclusivity. All those interested have the same chance of creating student work with like-minded colleagues.”
SFA continues to meet every Wednesday to create films and foster a love of movies on campus. If you have a desire to make films or just watch a few, don’t hesitate to drop by a meeting. You’ll be welcomed with a congenial attitude and an air of creativity. And who knows? If you stick around, maybe you could learn enough to be the next big Hollywood filmmaker.
