Rajko Grlic (left) and David Thomas
Photos: Chris Hondros
By Emily Caldwell
It's the day before a film festival competition deadline and an Ohio University
student filmmaker needs to prepare his entry, pronto, in the Peterson Sound
Studio in Lindley Hall. Something about the transfer to a new format isn't
working. There's fuzz on the monitor screen.
"What's wrong? What's wrong?" John Butler, production manager,
engineer, instructor, and, by all accounts, king of the sound studio, is
muttering as he studies the high-tech equipment. After a few minutes, the
transfer is in progress.
"John Butler's the man," MFA candidate Igor Kovacevich says. "He's
saved my life about 600 times since 1992. He helps students in his free
time."
"There is no free time," Butler retorts.
It's true that with the School of Film faculty, time is at a premium in
a program moving steadily to a higher professional plane and earning more
national and international visibility as a result.
The program has been on the upswing for the past decade. "When I arrived
in 1984, we were essentially a one-phone, two-camera, one-flatbed editing-bench
operation," says school Director David O. Thomas. The donation of the
sound studio, major grant support, and the Ohio Eminent Scholar of Film
Award helped solidify the program's renown as a small but strong graduate
film program with emphasis on independent films as well as an international
focus. Entry into the film program is competitive: last year, 160 people
applied for 16 slots.
"The quality and diversity of the faculty, and their willingness to
go the extra mile, make the difference," Thomas says. The school publishes
Wide Angle, edited by Associate Professor Ruth Bradley, an expert
in experimental cinema; edits the Asian Cinema Journal with Professor
George Semsel and Assistant Professor Jenny Lau, both well-known Asian cinema
experts; hosts an annual film conference each November directed by Lau;
and participates in the Athens International Film and Video Festival, directed
by Bradley and the Athens Center for Film and Video on campus.
"Considering that the students in the school normally produce about
50 films a year, there's little danger of us dying of boredom around here,"
says Thomas, who has a background as a screenwriter, director and producer
of dramatic work.
The faculty also includes Butler, who has worked for years with National
Geographic and WQED public television in Pittsburgh; lecturer Jack Wright,
MA '92, a filmmaker with ties to Appalshop, a media arts organization in
Kentucky; and Assistant Professor Ed Talavera, who has served as director
of photography on three feature films, and is at work on a fourth.
The fall 1993 arrival of Ohio Eminent Scholar Rajko Grlic expanded the school's
scope, and has been followed by a wave of developments, including a write-up
as a top film school in the national publication The Independent
and Ohio University's first invitation to screen films at the annual Independent
Feature Film Market (IFFM), a national festival in New York.
At least five universities were courting Grlic, an award-winning Croatian
director, producer and screenwriter, when the Ohio Eminent Scholar position
offered his ideal: the chance to maintain a professional career as a filmmaker
and teach at the same time. The School of Film received a $500,000 grant
from the Ohio Board of Regents, and OU had to match the grant to create
a $1 million endowment for the position.
Grlic is artistic director of the Institute for Motion Picture Development,
established in 1994 to enhance film students' professional training. Among
the institute's projects are scriptwriting workshops that draw top U.S.
and European faculty, development of a low-budget feature project, and creation
of an educational CD-ROM on directing the short film.
"My impression is that I was asked to be here to help this school move
toward professional filmmaking," Grlic says. "It's tougher and
tougher for students to become part of the American film industry. 'Film
industry' doesn't mean Hollywood. It's for everyone who wants to survive
and make a living being a part of the filmmaking process."
The quality of recent student films led to OU's inclusion as one of eight
schools in the country to screen films at the IFFM in the fall. One of the
entries earned a student filmmaking prize at the competition. The film,
"Drawing Lots," was the product of the first master class Grlic
taught here.
Rocco Hindman, BFA '94, was one of the four student writers and directors
of "Drawing Lots." Though the film degree path at Ohio University
is primarily for graduate students, Hindman was among the few Honors Tutorial
College undergraduates accepted as film majors. He now is enrolled in the
graduate film program at the University of Southern California.
Hindman says the invitation to the festival "does really show that
OU is a place where good films are being made." His experience at USC
is a testament to the difference between a film program in Los Angeles and
one in Athens. "USC has such a large pool of professionals it can draw
from - a lot more resident filmmakers," he says.
Such a large pool simply can't be sustained in Appalachian Ohio. It's one
of the mixed blessings of the location - the proximity to theater, music
and art students makes for a supportive, collaborative approach to filmmaking.
But a sense of the heavy competition to come and exposure to working film
professionals are harder to come by. Yet the cast of visiting film artists
who have made the trip to the Athens campus in the past two years is impressive.
Among them are Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" co producer Branko
Lustig and New York-based feature film producers Lisa Bruce and Bob Nickson.
Providing professional opportunities is all part of giving students a taste
of the industry.
"In my classes, I'm trying to behave less as a teacher and more as
a coach and producer. I'm trying to give students, in a much softer way,
the conditions of the real world," Grlic says.
School of Film students get another taste of real-life activities at the
Athens Center for Film and Video, an arm of the College of Fine Arts where
student workers earn film course credits. "There are teaching hospitals.
This is a teaching media arts center," says Bradley, who runs the center.
Art, telecommunications and film graduate and undergraduate students work
at the center to put together the ever-expanding Athens International Film
and Video Festival each spring. It's billed as the largest and oldest student-run
festival of its kind.
Students also have access to AVID technology, a digital nonlinear editing
system, and get their hands on a variety of equipment in the Peterson Sound
Studio. The studio, donated in 1985 by former Motion Picture Sound Inc.
Owner Tom Peterson of Cleveland, marked a major milestone for the university
because of the rare opportunity for students to use such equipment.
"Most universities might have this kind of facility, but it would be
staffed by union personnel," explains Butler, who has run the studio
since 1987. Peterson most recently donated an AVID digital sound editing
system.
Butler's contacts in the film and television industry have benefited a range
of students over the years. He gave alumnus Tony Buba, MFA '76, his first
roll of film. Buba ran with it, and has been earning awards and receiving
prestigious arts grants since the release of his first film in 1972.
Regarded as one of America's best known independent filmmakers, Buba has
screened his work - much of which revolves around issues in and near his
hometown of Braddock in western Pennsylvania - at festivals and museums
around the world. Known for his hybrid style of mixing documentary and fiction,
Buba attributes his aesthetic development to the freedom he had in film
school.
"There was no emphasis on any particular style when I got there. That
gave me the time to figure out what I wanted to do," Buba says.
The focus now, Grlic says, is on the craft of filmmaking. All of the nearly
700 American film schools teach film as art, but only about 10 to 15 of
the best also teach film as craft, he says. Grlic would like to see Ohio
University among those programs, and says he thinks the school is moving
in that direction.
Thomas adds that it takes certain qualities to find success in film, and
he sees them in Ohio
University students.
"We have some very exceptional students in the program right now who
are a pleasure to teach," he says. "They have the talent, the
savvy and the drive to make it in this crazy business."
Emily Caldwell, BSJ '88, covers the College of Fine Arts for University News Services and Periodicals.
