College senior Matthew Schwartz has spent the last couple of months working and reworking a script, pestering friends late at night to bounce off ideas and pulling together a production team for Emory's 2013 Campus Movie Fest (CMF).
CMF, a global competition in which the organization provides college students with the technology to make a five-minute short film in one week, kicked off at Emory on Feb. 13. University students scrambled to turn in their short films by the Feb. 19 deadline.
CMF will take place in the Schwartz Performing Arts Center on Feb. 27 at 7 p.m.
Schwartz, College senior Craig Swidler and Goizueta Business School sophomore Casey Horowitz spoke to the Wheel about their film, entitled "Temporality."
"Without revealing too much, we worked with eight different locations in four days," said Schwartz, the director, editor, producer and screenwriter for the film. "It's something that we didn't think we would be able to accomplish."
The script started as a 32-page assignment for Schwartz's screenwriting class last spring. Over winter break, he molded the script to about six and a half pages to fit the five-minute limit.
"[The script] was almost too ambitious and too complex to be executed in a five-minute short film," said Horowitz, the film's art director, recalling late-night brainstorming sessions. "When he showed me the script after winter break, I was in shock at how amazing it had become."
Assembling the Team
Schwartz directed the 2012 Campus Best Picture winner "Blackout." This year, he assembled the largest team an Emory CMF production has ever had, which was around 20 students composed primarily of students in the Film Studies Department.
All three agreed that they want to expand Emory's film studies department. They hope that the department will gradually move away from an academically-based program and become more balanced between theory and practice, according to Schwartz.
"It's not a very large department here – it's not NYU Tisch, but the filmmakers that have been coming out of this school lately are paving the way for new filmmakers, and inspiring them along the way," said Horowitz. "I hope that through them we're going to be able to build up this department to hopefully hit the same caliber one day as these really prominent film studies programs."
Schwartz said that he wanted to unify the talent of the Film Studies Department.
"There was something telling us we'd be able to get it done, and we did, which has everything to do with the team Matt got together," Swidler said. "Every person in their certain position was the most qualified to be in that position."
However, not everyone who participates in CMF is as extensively involved in film studies as Schwartz's team. Some new CMF-ers have no experience in filmmaking at all.
"Until you put yourself out there as an actor or producer or director or any of these things, you don't have any experience," said Swidler. It is a great opportunity for inexperienced filmmakers who don't have the necessary materials to give it a shot, according to Swidler.
Production
The CMF-imposed five-minute limit on movies is both a blessing and a curse for aspiring moviemakers.
"Five minutes is definitely a challenge, but I don't think it's an unwelcome one or necessarily an inappropriate one," said Swidler, the film's line producer. "It's a good way to teach people what five minutes means in film."
Indeed, Schwartz's team spent upwards of 100 hours on the film, according to Swidler.
CMF teams are provided a handheld camera, a laptop with editing software, a microphone and the necessary cables to produce a film. Each team has a different method, depending on how complicated the filming process is.
According to Schwartz, the less locations there are, the more time there is to edit. This means that films with less diversity in setting give the production team the flexibility to film and edit simultaneously.
"Temporality" required four straight days of filming at eight different locations, followed by 21 hours of editing.
Swidler jokingly recalled having to rein in Schwartz after the 15th take of one scene because they were running low on time. Horowitz remembers feelings of doubt over whether any of the takes were even usable.
Aside from the technical aspects of weaving scenes together, each scene has cinematographic and artistic elements that need to be considered.
The film is the cinematographic debut of College junior Olivia Luz. Luz and Schwartz had to consider every shot, scene by scene, paying attention to continuity. For example, they even considered details like the amount of water in a glass from one scene to the next.
Horowitz's job as art director required him to place every prop in a fashion that would be pleasing to the eye and appropriate for the scene.
The lead actor and actress of the film were flown in early to prepare from Los Angeles and Washington D.C., respectively. Schwartz, who was somewhat acquainted with both actors, had them practice getting comfortable with each other prior to production, given that their characters were romantically involved.
CMF encourages teams to not spend money in producing their film. All basic materials are provided by the organization. None of the actors or crewmembers of "Temporality" were paid; however, Schwartz was able to gather help from friends who invested money in order to purchase equipment.
High Hopes
Last year, Schwartz's film "Blackout" won Campus Best Picture and proceeded to make it into the top 50 at the national CMF competition. According to Schwartz, all the preparations for it were completed 72 hours before CMF.
"If we were prepared this time around, we could take the film just as far if not further and have it more relevant to where we are in the world today with social media," he said.
Schwartz, Swidler and Horowitz said that they have high hopes for the film this year.
"We got a lot out of the experience no matter what happens," said Schwartz. "We feel like we have the majority of the Film Studies Department in on this project, so we want to take this to the number one spot."
All three aspiring filmmakers said that they hope to see more of a relationship between the film department and CMF in the future, stressing that the films students produce in the competition is a direct reflection of the skills they are taught at Emory.
–Contact Rupsha Basu at
Rupsha.basu@emory.edu
