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.

