Around and Around location. Photograph provided by Jason Farmer.
Story was co-written and produced with Gavin Stewart.
Lights, camera, action!
Every major at Western Carolina University has a way for seniors to leave their last mark with the university. For the Film and Television Production majors, it is a senior thesis film.
This year, there are two separate films that have been written, produced, and directed by students. The films are Around and Around written by Jonathan Alexander and Creating Joseph written by Patricia Brown.
Around and Around was filmed earlier in the Fall semester and is now in post-production. Creating Joseph is in pre-production and will begin to be filmed in January.
Patricia Brown and Christopher Wold are the producers of the short film Creating Joseph.
“It’s basically a time for all the students to really get together and kind of create something that we’re here for,” shared Brown.
Various students gathered around a monitor on the set of Around and Around. Photograph provided by Jason Farmer.
As the producers, Brown and Wold worked as a team to fund-raise, organize, and create a budget along with working side by side with other departments to make the film happen.
“Learning film-making is like learning to create and control a world that is both magnificent and unquantifiable. While there are a number of things that can be taught in a classroom…so much of it is truly learned by doing it, and doing it with all of our passion and dedication…” said Joshua Russell, the new program director.
He shared that he thought without question that these projects help benefit students in the real, working world.
“There is a poetry in filmmaking that one must discover through a bizarre love relationship with the craft. You can only discover this sort of thing in through the process of creation itself. That’s why these projects are critical. That’s why we do them,” explained Russell.
You will be able to see both Creating Joseph and Around and Around during Controlled Chaos in the Spring of 2017.
Controlled Chaos is a film festival put on by the Film and Television Program. It is meant to showcase the best work coming out of the program each year and to celebrate the unique talents within the program. It will be held on Friday, April 28 in the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center.
