On Saturday, UW students and faculty screened projects from a semester’s worth of production courses in 4070 Vilas Hall. (Photo by Joel Ninmann)
For students and faculty of the Communication Arts program, a semester’s worth of hard work culminated in a 90-minute program on Saturday night. Scenes and short films were pulled from four Communication Arts classes for the Fall 2013 showcase. In addition to several select shorts from Artist in Residence Alex Rivera’s CA 609 course, “From Ecotopia to Ecopocaplypse,” the program offered a variety of beginner and intermediate level projects.
Two student films from CA 155 “Intro to Digital Media Production” centered on whimsical representations of morning routines. Mike Fuller and Madeline Krahm’s “Dust It Off” blends panic with exuberance in the hectic morning of a dance-prone student who believes he’s late for class — on a Saturday. The other, Brittany Glassberg and Cristina Henriquez’s “Take Two,” uses a split narrative to divide a young woman’s morning into “good” and “bad” timelines, the latter yielding a chance encounter with a new friend over coffee. Beyond film production, a podcast entitled “Mad City Hookups” featured funny interview clips of students discussing hookup culture on campus.
CA 355 “Intro to Media Production” found students taking chances in their projects. Powers Spees’ horror short “Read Me” used the Ghostbusters-esque quality of Memorial Library’s old interiors for eerie atmosphere, telling the plight of one student as she is haunted by a paperback copy of Stephen King’s The Shining. Ridiculous in concept, Spees executes his premise with aplomb, making use of deep staging and the library’s natural claustrophobia. Effective costume and makeup work to recreate Stanley Kubrick’s iconic Grady twins. While less daring in its premise, Erik Sataren’s “How to Effectively Write a Screenplay” anticipates groans to its “story about about writing story” with subversive humor and a wonderful Spinal Tap reference. Sataren incites plenty of laughs as his slacker screenwriter procrastinates with lines of cocaine, bong rips, and yes, even masturbation.
Young Ha Kim’s “The Guest” induced shocks from the audience in his story of a college stalker, though none of the gasps were as loud as those during Judy Sherburn’s documentary short. Preceded by both a verbal warning and a disclaimer on the evening program, “Fleshhooks” detailed exactly what its title promised, showing the ahem, ins and outs of the body modification practice performed here in Madison’s Blue Lotus. While powerful in its images, the short relies too much on shocks and blood rather than exploring pain’s relativity, cross-cutting between the hooks and a more tame nose piercing.
Interspersed throughout the program were select scenes from Erik Gunneson’s CA 467, “Advanced Motion Picture Workshop.” Clips ranged from period recreations (“On the Run”) to a surprising reveal (“Appearances”) to a scene of biting dialogue (“You’re Beautiful”). While all were presented without context, “Rachel” was the standout among them, featuring a young man who returns home to a voicemail from a woman from his recent past.