The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, September 28, 2017 — 5B
COURTESY OF FILMIC PRODUCTIONS
Filmic Productions is a group on campus
Filmic brings professional
production to our campus
The independent production company brings organization and
diversity to create professional grade video for the university
You’re sitting in the Big
House, it’s graduation, and
you are leaving your home
of the last four years. And in
the midst of all the tears and
commencement addresses, a
video plays — one filled with
all of the things that made
being a Wolverine over the
past four years so special, one
filled with the inside jokes that
only students at the University
share. Professionally done, and
over five minutes long, this
video, and many of the others
you’ve seen throughout your
time at the University, was
made by Filmic Productions,
Michigan’s
premier
student
run video production group.
Filmic is a group filled
with a diversity of students,
who range in ages, majors
and passions. From Ross to
Anthropology
to
Creative
Writing,
they
all
share
ELI RALLO
Daily Arts Writer
FILM
one passion — making and
producing films. As a group,
they
consider
themselves
“cinematic problem solvers”
and strive to make students,
alumni and professors alike
“feel something” from the
videos they put out year after
year.
LSA senior Michael Boctor,
Filmic’s lead director, was
passionate about Filmic from
the moment he was accepted
to Michigan. “I opened up
my acceptance letter to the
University
of
Michigan,
and
there
was
this
little
video attached beneath the
‘CONGRATULATIONS—
You’re
IN!’,”
he
said.
“I
watched it and had chills
running through my veins.
The video made me more
passionate than ever about
becoming
a
Wolverine.
It
evoked
excitement
and
emotion in me, and I could
tell that the University must
have had to hire some serious
professionals to get that done.
I wasn’t wrong. That video
was Filmic Productions’s “The
Letter M.” Behind the camera
were a bunch of individuals
with a combination of talent
and passion that created a
dominant force in the market
they were in, and I couldn’t
help but be drawn towards
that.”
The
students
who
join
Filmic do so because they have
a passion for film and creating
art that sends a message to a
larger group. They are driven
by the desire to create, but also
by the larger desire to share
stories. “Film is a reflection
of our society, but film also
helps define society,” said LSA
senior Michelle Kim, Filmic’s
producer.
Filmic plays a big part
in defining the society at
the
University.
Between
Bicentennial address videos,
graduation videos, acceptance
videos and countless others
that have racked up thousands
upon thousands of views, they
are no doubt the head media
group on campus.
What’s even more important
than the work they do, though,
is the community they build
doing
it.
They
consider
themselves a very tight-knit
group — and more than just
friends, they are family. They
split meetings into general
team meetings and project
specific
meetings
to
keep
organized.
“If it’s early in the production
timeline, the producer will
normally give the update and
talk about about how to have
conversations with the client
and what we’re brainstorming,”
Rachel Hurwitz, LSA senior
and producer, said. “If it’s in
the production stage, normally
the director will talk about the
shoots we have lined up, what
is working and what’s not and
how we are planning to move
forward. Finally, if it’s in the
post-production
stage,
the
editor will discuss how it’s all
coming together.”
Though a lot of fun, the team
of Filmic has a lot of weight
on their shoulders as well.
With the University enlisting
them to work on projects for
publicity and special events,
there’s a lot of pressure to
succeed. “Being so professional
really puts on the pressure to
perform,” LSA senior Leah
Hirsh, another producer, said.
“It makes a project more than
just something you make for
your
own
satisfaction.
It’s
an opportunity to really say
something and have a voice to
a larger population. So often
as college students, our voices
feel unimportant. These larger
projects give Filmic, a group
of college students, a powerful
platform to tell stories.”
Filmic
prides
themselves
on their focus as a storytelling
group. This makes their art
more
personal
and
more
influential on the society of
Ann Arbor, Michigan.
“You’re
taking
something
that never existed and forming
something out of it, something
that
makes
people
feel
different after,” said Kim. “It’s
storytelling at its best.”
By being such a large part of
the University, Filmic reaches a
diverse group of people — and
it’s really important to the team
that they continue to do so.
In a world where people need
to relate to and understand
art, Filmic is more needed
than ever. And the work that
they have done, and will do
going forward, is extremely
important to telling the stories
of every person who walks
through the Diag, sits in the Big
House and attends a lecture in
Angell Hall.
“We
brand
ourselves
as
creative problem solvers and
I think that is really true,”
Hurwitz said. “Being in Filmic
has caused me to start looking
at the world differently, not
only in how to frame a shot,
but how to interact with the
people and the world around
me and influence them in a
positive light. It’s not just about
how to make the video look
professional, but how to make
something people are going to
feel connected to and want to
watch again and again.”
Behind the
camera were
a bunch of
individuals with
a combination of
talent and passion
that created a
dominant force in
the market they
were in
COMEDY CENTRAL
What if we wrote a show about us just ‘hanging out’ you know?
City of Aspiring Angels: How
the ‘U’ competes in the LA
screenwriting hellscape
There’s an urban legend floating
around the Screen Arts and Cultures
department that two students in the
program sold a spec-script to “Broad
City.” Through my inconclusive
investigations, I can neither confirm
nor deny the validity of this story,
so, for now, it’ll have to remain a
myth. (But how cool would it be if
it were true?) Regardless, it’s a tale
that those with literary aspirations
love to hear as they fire up a brand-
spanking new document of Final
Draft. After all, Matt Damon and Ben
Affleck wrote “Good Will Hunting”
in college, so really anything is
possible.
If spending a summer in Los
Angeles taught me one thing, it’s
that the aspiring writer’s pipe dream
is, ironically, a Hollywood cliché. At
any given L.A. coffee shop, at least
three laptops would be opened to an
unfinished screenplay, with an over-
caffeinated
and
under-groomed
“creative” at the keyboard. Even
Uber drivers, without fail, tried to
sell me on their movie pitch as soon
as they caught drift that I was in
“the biz.” Little did they know I was
a just a bushy-tailed intern.
Even my “original” ideas were
already taken. My roommate and I
had been toying with the premise
for a workplace TV comedy set
in the mailroom of a Hollywood
talent agency. Our story was coming
together swimmingly: we’d thought
of the characters, the love-triangles,
the neurotic bosses. And, since
Hollywood loves producing stories
about Hollywood, we joked that
this was our ticket to screenwriting
success. That is, until I overheard
some tipsy guy in Santa Monica
trying to impress a thoroughly
unimpressed girl with a plan to pitch
his (identical) original series “The
Mailroom” to a network executive
later that week.
In a market oversaturated with
talent, how are aspiring writers
able to differentiate themselves?
The odds seem daunting at best, if
not downright demoralizing. And
yet, even in Los Angeles, a city over
2,000 miles away from Ann Arbor,
the University of Michigan finds a
way to take care of its own.
It
starts
in
the
classroom.
The
Screen Arts and Cultures department,
lovingly abbreviated to SAC (rumors are
circulating of an impending rename, due
to overwhelming confusion), often flies
under the radar. With a relatively small
yearly cohort of about fifty graduating
students, the program does not begin to
compete in size with the L.A. and New York
City film schools. However,
the
department
has
developed a screenwriting
sub-major
completely
unique to that of other
Film and Television studies
programs. In short, it forces
aspiring writers to actually
do the writing, and do a
lot of it. In Screenwriting
I:
The
Feature
Script,
students are challenged to
write an entire, feature-
length film throughout the
course of a single semester.
In Writing for Television
II: Pilots, students end the
semester with an original
pilot
under
their
belt,
which is perhaps the single
most valuable intellectual
real estate an aspiring TV
writer can bring with her to
Hollywood.
And while it’s not particularly in the
campus
spotlight,
the
University
of
Michigan film community is always eager
to do more. Students across disciplines
flock to organizations like Filmic and
M-agination, both clubs that develop
and produce original films. There’s an
eagerness to create and collaborate, and
this energy is palpable.
Ann Arbor, in its own way, is a little
movie mecca. Home to the annual Ann
Arbor Film Festival, what other college
town can boast two movie theaters within
a five minute walking distance of central
campus?
Los Angeles is a different beast all
together. Celebrity spottings occur daily,
traffic is horrible and, somewhere, an
assistant is being yelled at for getting the
coffee order wrong. And
yet, the SAC department
still found a way to bring
a piece of Ann Arbor to
Hollywood.
With
the
help of two particularly
generous Michigan alumni,
Kelci
Parker
and
Dan
Pipski, the department was
able to put on a speaker
series for all the SAC majors
interning in Los Angeles.
At weekly sessions, interns
had the opportunity to talk
with industry executives,
writers,
directors
and
producers.
It
was
the
exclusive
University
of
Michigan
scoop,
and
somehow, I always left with
a renewed sense of hope.
Maybe, it wasn’t all just a
pipe dream.
So, I’ve come to the humble conclusion
that the only way to be a writer is to write,
and write a lot. Perhaps “making it” only
comes to those that tell stories without
the expectation of fame, recognition or
anyone liking what they’ve done. Success
is definitely a function of talent, but not
without passion and persistence. Some
luck (that may come in the form of a
helpful Michigan alumnus) helps, too.
DANIELLE YACOBSEN
Daily TV/New Media Editor
TV
It was the
exclusive
University of
Michigan scoop,
and somehow, I
always left with a
renewed sense of
hope
LOVE THE FILM
ALL OF IT
THERE’S SO MUCH OF IT
JOIN FILM
E-mail arts@michigandaily.com for
information on applying.