department of film & media studies...“horror and comedy are almost interchangeable,” findlay...
TRANSCRIPT
Volume 9, Issue 8 March 2019
T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f K a n s a s
Department of Film & Media Studies
Inside this issue:
Recognitions And Accomplishments
2-4
Out & About 5
Alumni News 6-8
And more! 9
Department of F i lm & Media Studies March 2019
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Recognitions & Accomplishments
KU's Kevin Willmott takes home Oscar for work on 'BlacKkKlansman' Courtney Bierman | @courtbierman Josh McQuade | @JoshMcQuadeUDK
University of Kansas Film and Media Studies professor Kevin Willmott has won an Oscar.
Willmott won Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on “BlacKkKlansman” along with his three co-writers Spike Lee, Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz. The award is the film's first win of the night out of a total of six nominations.
Ryan Jenga, a freshman film and media studies student at the University, said he had no doubt Willmott would take home the Oscar but it was still a thrill to see the professor on stage.
"[My reaction was] joyous shock, I guess. It's crazy to see someone you know at the Oscars getting an award, getting a big honor," Jenga said.
"If he didn't win, he'd be robbed."
Willmott did not the take the microphone, but director Lee used the speech to acknowledge Black History Month, thank his family and encourage everyone to vote in the 2020 presidential election.
The “BlacKkKlansman” screenplay also garnered wins at the British Academy Film Awards and the African-American Film Critics Association, among others.
Willmott and Lee are frequent collaborators, having previously worked together on the screenplay of the 2015 film “Chi-Raq.”
This is Willmott’s first nomination and win after a 20-year career in film.
Read the full article in The University Daily Kansan: http://www.kansan.com/arts_and_culture/ku-s-kevin-willmott-takes-home-oscar-for-work-on/article_a3f0cff4-38ab-11e9-b30e-8fafc7c2873a.html
Department of F i lm & Media Studies March 2019
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Recognitions & Accomplishments
Film & media studies professor takes Oscar for co-writing 'BlacKkKlansman'
LAWRENCE — After months of Oscar buzz, Kevin Willmott’s work on “BlacKkKlansman” was lauded with an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay Feb. 24.
Willmott, a University of Kansas film & media studies professor, co-wrote the screenplay for the 2018 film about Ron Stallworth, the first black police officer in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Stallworth wrote a 2014 memoir about how he infiltrated a cell of the virulently white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
Willmott collaborated on the screenplay with Spike Lee, Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz. The film has been gathering accolades, from the Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival to a BAFTA award for best adapted screenplay.
His body of work includes films about the Wilt Chamberlain era of KU basketball, Jim Crowe with a sci-fi twist, 19th century Native American boarding schools, what the nation could have looked like had the South won the Civil War and another collaboration with director Lee about Chicago gun violence.
Willmott has announced or begun work on at least three more films: He and several KU colleagues are collaborating on "I, Too, Sing America: Langston Hughes Unfurled," a documentary about the prolific 20th-century writer and one-time Kansan. It has a tentative release date in 2020. Willmott has begun work on another documentary with a Kansas angle, a film version of the 2018 book by KCUR-FM editor C.J. Janovy, "No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas." And he announced recently the start of another collaboration with Spike Lee titled "Da Five Bloods," a dramatic film about black Vietnam War veterans.
Copied from KU News: https://news.ku.edu/2019/02/25/film-media-studies-professor-takes-oscar-co-writing-blackkklansma
utm_source=KU+Today+Newsletter+List&utm_campaign=ca914c7770EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_02_25_04_31&utm_medium=ema
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Department of F i lm & Media Studies March 2019
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Recognitions & Accomplishments
Ruby Jean Ly, our newest film student, was born on February 11, weighing 6 pounds, 2 oz. and is 19 ½” tall. Lindsay Ly (pictured here with her husband Chris, son August, and baby Ruby) is the FMS Social Media Coordinator and assistant to the Chair.
Congrats to KU Film and Media Studies professor Kevin Willmott and the rest of the "BlackKklansman" writing team on their British Academy of Film and Television Arts award! #KUarts
https://deadline.com/2019/02/2019-bafta-awards-winners-list-1202553890 fbclid=IwAR2wyvTei5yLXdYXum8KzzI0jvxrUo-IaZkwr9UVDT1fHJ4VSjIebFV05I
FMS alumni Joshua and Stephanie Wille (FMS Ph.D. and MA, respectively) announce the birth of their daughter, Eleanor Raven Wille, born at 6:24 a.m. on February 6, 2019.
Department of F i lm & Media Studies March 2019
Out & About
Assistant Teaching Professor Laura Kirk’s review of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (Rutgers University Press, 2015) by Miranda J. Banks is published in the current edition of the Journal of Screenwriting, Volume 9, Issue 3. Since Laura’s area of research is gender parity in film, she was honored to review a new history book she found to be more inclusive and also to gain a new colleague in author Miranda Banks from Emerson College.
KU Film student Jacob Schermerhorn and a team of other KU students have just released a music video for local Lawrence band, The Arsonists. Their song, "Alex" has particularly dark subject matter, as it addresses gun violence in the Lawrence school district as well as the country as a whole. The band's goal of this video is to inspire change with gun control and to raise awareness across the nation. Read more about this project here: https://bit.ly/2H7fqj5 #KUarts
Copied from: KU School Of The Arts
https://iheartlocalmusic.com/2019/02/28/local-band-releases-grim-video-after-series-of-school-gun-incidents fbclid=IwAR3YP6HWc8dPpa0uewwHA1MGwhDYQs3JxaqvcY0lI2jrJ2Y7HB5xysjL8JE
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In September 2018, Savannah Rodgers (FMS BGS 2017) moved to New York for a TED Residency. She delivered a TED Talk at TED HQ that should be released sometime in 2019. In January 2019, Rodgers moved to Los Angeles for the OutSet Fellowship at the Outfest Film Festival. She is one of 15 fellows who will be creating projects that will premiere at the 2019 Outfest Film Festival.
Read more about the TED Residency here: https://blog.ted.com/meet-the-fall-2018-class-of-ted-residents/
Read more about her experience with TED and Adobe Project 1324 here: https://theblog.adobe.com/meet-the-2018-ted-residents/
Read more about OutSet here: https://www.outfest.org/outset/
Department of F i lm & Media Studies March 2019
Alumni News
Hunter Harding (FMS BGS 2018) writes that a lot of exciting things have been happening to him since he graduated in May 2018. After doing an internship as a Stories Video Editor at a social media advertising company called AdvertiseMint, Hunter got back into freelance editing and within no time landed a job as editor on a feature film called Tyger Tyger starring Dylan Sprouse and Thea Sofie Loch Næss. Hunter is working with the film’s director, Kerry Mondragon, “around the clock” to get it edited as soon as possible and they hope to finish the project in time to submit it to the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.
Department of F i lm & Media Studies March 2019
Alumni News
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University alumnus creates dark comedy about grave robbers
University alumnus Sam Findlay [FMS BGS 2011] knew from the moment he listened to a podcast about gravediggers how he wanted to shape his next comedic short film.
The idea came from an episode of the popular real-life crime podcast “Lore.” The episode detailed the lives of William Burke and William Hare, who dug up graves and stole the bodies to sell to Scottish anatomist Robert Knox for anatomy lectures.
This true story gave Findlay the backbone for “The Heirloom,” a dark comedy about two men who want to steal the prized ring of a dead woman by digging up her grave and selling it to better their lot in life.
“Horror and comedy are almost interchangeable,” Findlay said. “You can take a logline from a comedy movie and rearrange or change one word, [and] you can make it sound like a horror.”
After shaping his own story around two gravediggers, Findlay worked backwards to create the narrative he believed would surround this culminating moment in the film. And outside of just a simple desire for wealth, Findlay wanted to make sure the characters were all connected outside of the current narrative.
“I kind of reverse-engineered [the story] from there,” Findlay said. “I thought, ‘Okay, why did they dig up a body? What if there’s something on the body that they want? How can I tie in the main characters with the woman who just died?’”
After fleshing out the full narrative, Findlay went to work on finding sets in the Kansas City area and working out the look he wanted the film to reflect.
“We were doing it for very little money,” Findlay said. “Like the church we shot was my great grandma’s church that my mom had a connection to. We gave them $100 to shoot on location. And the farm at the end of the film where they dig up the grave was my mom’s cousin’s farm.”
“There was a certain tone we wanted to set,” Vetter said. “And it’s a very colorful tone because at the end of the day, it is a dark comedy.”
“We wanted to make sure it looked a very certain way,” Findlay said. “So, we had a color palette that we created, which was this mint, red and tungsten. And we wanted everything to kind of look like that.”
Vetter also thought Findlay’s commitment to the project and his ability to allow free rein for ideas helped give the project its specific look.
“Sam was actually hands-off when it came to the visuals,” Vetter said. “He has a certain style that he wants to go for, but as far as the final look of it, he gave me a lot of liberties, which was actually really fun. I’d pitch ideas to him and he’d say, ‘Yes, let’s do that. I love it.’”
“It’s good as a filmmaker not to get boxed in,” Findlay said. “I just try to tell good stories, and if someone says, ‘This is actually a comedy,’ then I’ll just go with it.”
“The Heirloom” will make a festival run later this year before its expected release on Vimeo in 2020.
Read the full article in The University Daily Kansan: http://www.kansan.com/arts_and_culture/university-alumnus-creates-dark-comedy-about-grave-robbers/article_ed6fded0-263c-11e9-802a-e7a2891cbd7c.html
Alex Oliver, left, plays Jessup, and Matthew J. Lindblom, right, plays Clyde in "The Heirloom."
Department of F i lm & Media Studies March 2019
Alumni News
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University alum takes a break from feature film to direct music video
University alumnus Josh Doke [FMS BGS 2012] got a pretty good grasp of what he could do with his next directorial effort after just one sit-down meeting before production started.
This project won’t be seen on the big screen, though. Instead, it came as a music video for a cover of Sia’s “Underneath the Christmas Lights.”
“You can try out things that you’ve been wanting to try out but don’t know if they’ll work for a full-length feature,” Doke said. “You can kind of flex your filmmaking muscles in music videos. It’s also one of the few forms you can get really experimental with anymore.”
This experimentation led to a design Doke said was a highly collaborative effort that matched both his vision and the vision of Whit, the moniker of musician Whitney Coleman, an up-and-coming pop musician out of Nashville, Tennessee, where the project was shot.
“We kind of met in the middle,” Doke said. “She knew she wanted it to be a performance, so it was mainly her singing without any storylines or cutaways. And I knew I wanted to do something that wasn’t just as straightforward.”
Most of Doke’s pitches to Coleman on the project’s design came with the knowledge they would shoot in a relatively small studio, which lead to multiple camera and editing tricks to give the video the feel he wanted. This look was composed largely of deep-black backgrounds contrasted by a single key light that illuminated only Coleman.
There wasn’t a lot of room for dolly tracking or camera movement,” Doke said. “So, we kind of put her on a spinning platform that rotated her instead of rotating the camera. And with the all-black background, we were really able to pull that off.”
“Once I heard the song, I realized that she was singing three different parts,” Doke said. “I realized that that would be really great to kind of come in with these different parts and do these overlaps in the video.”
The design and planning on the project happened in a relatively short amount of time according to Coleman, who said she wanted to push her content into music video form as soon as possible.
“I had planned on starting releasing music in the new year,” Coleman said. “But I didn’t want to wait until 2019 to kind of introduce myself to the world, so to speak. So, I just told [Doke] I thought about doing a Christmas video.”
“His vision and approach to everything really lined up with mine,” Coleman said. “And the rest is history.”
“I don’t mind looking at prior work,” Coleman said. “But when it comes to working with someone, there’s got to be the vibe. And I just think I really connected with his vibe instantly once we met.”
“I loved that he was so calm,” Coleman said. “Calm and confident. There didn’t seem to be anything that would shock him or disturb him or frustrate him in such a way that it kind of ruins the whole vibe of the shoot or the whole planning process.”
Doke also said coming into the project understanding his limitations helped in many ways to give the project the look they were both trying to get.
“I think we were able to pull off a little bit more of a polished video just based on the technique,” Doke said. “And I guess that’s one thing, too, is knowing your parameters and knowing what you can get away with.”
With Nashville as his new hometown, Doke looks to continue extending his skills in music video production on top of working on other future projects.
“You’ve kind of got to work your way into that industry,” Doke said. “Especially where I’m in Nashville now. I’m dipping my toe back into that world and kind of picking it back up again.”
Read the full article in The University Daily Kansan: http://www.kansan.com/arts_and_culture/university-alum-takes-a-break-from-feature-film-to-direct/article_c5985082-2b22-11e9-b208-236a9a7cea91.html
Nashville-based musician Whit sings a cover of Sia's "Underneath the Christmas Lights" in a new music video directed by University alumnus Josh Doke.
T h e D e p a r t m e n t o f F i l m a n d M e d i a S t u d i e s T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f K a n s a s
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Department of Film and Media Studies
Summerfield Hall, Suite 230
1300 Sunnyside Avenue
Lawrence, KS 66045
Phone: 785-864-1340
E-mail: [email protected]
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Academic Calendar
March 04 - Deadline Credit/No Credit
March 11 - First Day of Spring Break
March 17 - Last Day of Spring Break
Equipment Check-in: 10:00 a.m.— 12:00 p.m., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Equipment Check-out: 1:00 p.m.— 3:00 p.m., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Sign-up to check-out equipment in the binder on the counter in 230 Summerfield.
Sign-up for editing rooms by signing the edit room schedule posted on the editing room door (418b Summerfield). Pick up the key in the FMS office (230 Summerfield).
Check with your instructor or John McCluskey, Assistant Technical Director, for more information.
Miranda Cook
Academic Advisor
230 Summerfield Hall
785-864-3500
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Twitter: @KUFMS, @KUSchoolofArts, @KUCollege
March 2019