PRODIGY CAMP 2010 
TheFilmSchool secured a major grant for this year and one for the next ten years to allow us to offer The Prodigy Camp, our one-week session for the best teen filmmakers in the world. Students travel from all over to a precious retreat on Whidbey Island where in one week they work with our faculty and other established filmmakers to create their own films. It is a magical experience, but don't take our word for it, read what some of the students had to say: I just wanted to tell you how much this camp has actually changed my life. I have never been so inspired and being there made me realize that film is what I really want to do with my life. - Griffin This film camp was a great experience. Period. I am privileged to have had such a great experience in my life, especially at such a young age. Throughout the week I have learned more then I could have ever imagined. I learned how to direct, write, film, and produce a film. This week I had the privilege of getting to direct my first film with the help of a great mentor. - Victoria I just wanted to, again, say thank you so much, for both the scholarship, and one of the most amazing weeks of my life. I also want to thank you, the staff, and everybody for making the film camp possible. It was a tremendous experience that I will never, ever forget. I feel that the camp has opened my eyes and changed who I am as a person, and I couldn't be happier because of it. I cant thank you enough for giving me this wonderful opportunity and how much this has meant to me. I got home just a few hours ago, yet I already miss everybody that was there. - Cody This week really showed me that I am capable of creating things that I think are great pieces art. - Conner |
| | First Tuesdays with TheFilmSchool at Roy Street Cofeee and Tea  The initiation of the free First Tuesdays at Roy Street Coffee and Tea has been tremendously successful in introducing the school and its principles to new audiences in Seattle. About 100 people have been coming to the screening of the environmental doc SWEET CRUDE with Sandy Cioffi, Pitch Night with Richard Hutton of Vulcan Pictures, Mini-Structure Class with John Jacobsen, and Short Film night with several of our alumni. August 3rd Margo Meck holds Mythology Night and September 7th is the Film Festival Primer Night - see more details on our website. |
| Summer Session 2010  Estonia, Louisiana, Virginia, Australia, Georgia, the United Kingdom, Los Angeles - students continue to come from all over the world to TheFilmSchool and the Summer 2010 session was no exception. There were so many applicants for this class that we created our first Fall Session (October 30 -November 20) to give those students a chance to attend this year.
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| The Wrap News, February 26, 2010  By: Peter McAlevey What Hollywood Owes to Oxford It's hard to think of a more disparate connection than Tinsel Town and the ancient college on the Thames, Oxford University. But believe it or not, there is one, a quarter-century old, that has yielded numerous stars, Academy Awards, hit films and hit-film makers. And I have some little personal knowledge. Now, this goes back till the baby boomers were all still in college. While I was studying in New York, my friend Billy Levy headed off to Oxford, the ancient market town that, since the Dark Ages, had been home to a number of colleges that collected themselves into what we know as Oxford. Of course, in those days they were more interested in studying Latin or Greek than Hollywood, but that would, 800 years later, change.
Not without some trial and tribulation, naturally -- as Bill explained, in the 1200s, merchants, angry at the haughty attitude of too many professors strolling around as though "entitled" in those hooded snuggies they wore to keep warm, descended on the colleges, killing students and professors and driving others off. Some fled 60 or so miles to the East and found a nice spot without an annoying town around it at the base of a bridge over the Cam River, which became England's other great university, Cambridge.
For the hearty scholars who stayed at Oxford, however, fame and fortune soon arrived in the sons and daughters of the landed gentry and, eventually, their survival was assured.
Cut to the late 1970s -- America is in crisis, there are no jobs for graduating college seniors. (And kids today think the economy is rough -- try 19 percent inflation and 20 percent unemployment!)
I once asked my classmate, the legendary filmmaker Ric Burns, how he came to be a documentary maker. As he pointed out, he never planned it -- with no jobs, he decided to take a Fulbright scholarship to Oxford and return three years later, hoping things would be better. With students from around the world -- not to mention hot chicks, like the late Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, then a teenager driving an MG around the Bear pub looking for parties) what better place to ride out a recession?
Likewise, at the same time in the Midwest, a young farmboy named Michael Hoffman, and in Seattle, a young history student named Rick Stevenson, had similar ideas.
Ric was luckier -- by the time his fellowship ran out, his brother Ken had started the New York film company where they would produce the legendary PBS series "Civil War" that changed the face of filmmaking.
Michael and Rick Stevenson, as they told me years later, weren't so lucky. As their fellowships were about to expire, they still had no idea what they wanted to do, other than continue their idyllic lives as foreign students. How to find the money to stay?
As I understand it, they came up with a brilliant idea: bring stuffy old Oxford into the modern era! After all, how could it call itself a world-class University with no film program? And what did the English know about film -- their last big hit had been "Lawrence of Arabia" two decades before?
Anyway, as I heard it, they came up with an idea to stay in Oxford -- convince the ancient Dons of Oxford to put up $100,000 to finance something called the Oxford Film Society (later, the Oxford Film Company) to produce a film about rich kids at Oxford to be directed by, surprise, Michael Hoffman and produced by Rick Stevenson. Ironic, isn't it, how that all worked out. But the real irony was -- they produced a hit! The movie? "Privileged." The star? A young Oxford actor named (at that time) "Hughie" Grant (later Hugh Grant). Their director of photography? A young Swiss student Uli Steiger (later DP of such giant films as "The Day After Tomorrow").
Though shot for only the $100,000 they could promote from the Dons, Michael and Rick knew how to sell their film. With a full-page rave for "Privileged" from Time Magazine in 1982 (long before Sundance had become the launching pad for indie filmmakers), they were suddenly courted by everyone in the industry. Savvy Americans that they were, they decided to finance their next film, "Restless Natives," by getting Marine Midland Bank to sponsor an "all-England script competition," with the reward being ... Michael Hoffman gets to direct your film and Rick Stevenson produces it!!!
By their third picture, Robert Redford of Sundance had discovered them and arranged the production of "Promised Land," which added famed director Pier Paulo Pasolini's production designer Eugenio Zanetti to their crew and starred Meg Ryan. They were off -- the same team of Michael, Rick, Uli and Eugenio producing the lost MGM classic "Some Girls," which started the career of "L.A .Law" beauty Sheila Kelley, revived that of Patrick "McDreamy" Dempsey and gave future Academy Award-winner (and Harvard student) Jennifer Connelly her first part.
Let's see, so far they'd created Hugh Grant, Sheila Kelley and Jennifer Connelly. Ultimately, the old crowd had to break up -- Uli Steiger left to shoot Connelly in full frontal nudity in "Hot Spot," I went on to hire Eugenio Zanetti for his first U.S. studio film, "Flatliners," where he created an entire U.S. medical school on Stage 15 of Warner Bros. by vacuforming bricks. Later, our director, Joel Shumacher, took him on to his next picture, "Last Action Hero," where as Eugenio teased me, his art department budget was larger than the entire budget of "Flatliners" ($15.9m)
On the other hand, "Flatliners" was the most profitable picture Columbia Pictures had in years; "Hero" the least profitable. Oh, well, Michael Hoffman went on to hire Eugenio back for '95s "Restoration," for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, as he was for '97s "What Dreams May Come." He won one of two -- not a bad percentage, before moving on to directing. Rick Stevenson -- he went on to directing, too, and, I hear, has a film coming out this year.
All this comes to mind, of course, because of the Academy Awards -- Michael's newest film, "The Last Station," a Tolstoy adaptation that has won numerous critical plaudits, including Academy nominations for Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer, seems to be falling under the radar. Despite being described as "****Perfect" by no less a paper than the well-regarded New York Observer. And that's a shame. After all, if it weren't for Michael and Rick and the Oxford Film Society, there would have been no Academy Awards for Jennifer Connelly and Eugenio Zanetti, no Brit film "revival" with "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "About a Boy" or "Love, Actually" (all starring "Hughie" Grant), no incredible shots of space aliens from "Independence Day" or moving glaciers from "The Day After Tomorrow." Heck, there wouldn't even have been Sheila Kelley, Elizabeth Hurley and/or, heck, "The Governator" in "Last Action Hero." And while you may not agree with all those choices, the old Oxford Film Society, which only existed in it's original form for a brief period, seems to have as much or more effect on modern Hollywood than any group of filmmakers from America's "Big Four" of film schools: Columbia ("The Hurt Lockers" Kathryn Bigelow; Jim Jarmush); NYU (Marty Scorcese); UCLA (Francis Ford Coppola) or USC (too numerous to mention.) May the OFS rest in peace -- and godspeed to Michael's "The Last Station." |
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Register now for the 17th annual Austin Film Festival and Conference, October 21-24, 2010, and get unparalleled access to screenwriters and filmmakers like David Simon, Michael Arndt, Shane Black, Allan Loeb, Jon Lucas & Scott Moore, Noah Hawley, John August, Daniel Petrie, Jr., Michael Brandt & Derek Haas. Representatives from UTA, WME, Pixar Animation Studios, Focus Features, Paramount Pictures, Mosaic Media, Anonymous Content and more. 4 days of panels. 8 nights of film. Late night parties. Countless networking opportunities. And did somebody say tequila? Buy your Badge and see the full list of speakers here.
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| Alumni Updates Joshua Casteel just finished writing a play about Jackson Pollock's "Mural," entitled "The Pollock," commissioned by the University of Iowa Museum of Art, and is currently writing the screenplay for a bio-drama entitled "Tears of the Hurricane," commissioned by a midwest nonprofit organization. Toby Scale's script "Joe," the first script he wrote after finishing his session at TheFilmSchool, won third place at The Indie Gathering, and it's currently at the quarter-finalist round for BlueCat. Chris Oliver is currently producing multiple film projects. At the time of this writing, he has signed on and scheduled to produce "Airlock" by writer Gerrin Tramis, "Linney" by writer Kevin Sabourin, and "I Love Death" by writer Travis Sterner. Chris is also in post-production on the highly anticipated short film he produced, titled "Arthur", written by Joshua Bourland and directed by John Jacobsen. Kevin Sabourin finished his short film script "Linney" and will be filming in the fall, it will also be read as part of the August 16th Caught in the ACT Short Scripts Night, at ACT Theatre. Kevin is also producing a TV series with Rick Stevenson, "Official Best of Fest Presents... The Best Films You've Never Seen." Andrew Iseminger's script "Manifold Destiny" was a Silver Ace Award winner at the 2010 Las Vegas Film Festival. The short film, "Live Henry Live," by filmmakers Adam Bale and Alec Whittle, starring Harry Calbom and Scott MacLaughlin, was accepted into the Washougal International Film Festival . All are alumni of TheFilmSchool. Additionally, the piece Adam Bale did for the Seattle Channel on the Henry Murals was nominated for a local Emmy in the Arts/Entertainment Feature Segment category. Jessika Satori's film "Appellation," edited by TheFilmSchool alum Travis Sterner, was accepted into the Action on Film International Film Festival in Pasadena--the screening time is 29th July at 2pm...The website for more info is www.aoffest.com Elena Hartwell's full-length play "A Strange Disappearance of Bees" opens the 10-11 season at the Detroit Repertory Theatre, Nov 4-Dec 26. It is also getting readings at Oldcastle Theatre Co. in Vermont, and Center Stage in Greenville-Spartanberg. Elena is also adapting "Prairie Nocturne" by Ivan Doig for Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle- and her short play "Ahab's Wife" is going to tour Seattle, New York, and England.
Char Easter has participated in a focus group for Adobe's screenwriting software, Adobe Story. The product launched and shipped with CS5. She is also writing a screenplay on the trials of online dating titled, "Let's Go Shopping." Heidi Dietrich is doing a variety of journalism freelance writing and contract writing gigs, and just launched her website . Leonie Mikele's play "French Quarter" had a reading at Hugo House on July 14 (Bastille Day) at 6:30pm. Margie Slovan-- another alum of TheFilmSchool -- directed the reading. Leonie was also admitted to a low-residency MFA program run by Northwest Institute for the Arts on Whidbey Island and will be studying poetry with David Wagoner and Carolyne Wright.
Randy Webb, Lyle Holmes, Judy Williamson and Kent Jameson, all grads of TheFilmSchool's charter session in 2004, still meet regularly and recently organized a reading of Kent Jameson's "Ginger's Tale."
Justin Burris McGowan just finished a feature script called "Awake, Alone, and Falling," which he submitted for next year's Sundance Screenwriter's Lab.
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| | | | | UPCOMING EVENTS August 3rd, 6:30-8:30pm, First Tuesday with TheFilmSchool at Roy Street Coffee and Tea (700 Broadway Avenue East), Mythologist Margo Meck, PhD, leads a mini-course on Mythology in Writing. Please rsvp to Jenni . See our Facebook event here. August 16th, 7-10pm, ACT Theatre (700 Union Street), don't miss Tom Skerritt hosting the next CAUGHT IN THE ACT reading of 5 short alumni scripts. And save the date, on November 1st, hear Lisa Halpern's work, BROKEN FOR YOU. More details on the CAUGHT IN THE ACT program here. Please rsvp to Jenni and specify which reading you wish to attend. September 7th, 6:30-8:30pm, First Tuesday with TheFilmSchool at Roy Street Coffee and Tea (700 Broadway Avenue East), Festival Night Primer. Warren Etheredge hosts this evening, focusing on major, local and niche festivals--and how to make the most of them. Please rsvp to Jenni. October 22nd, application deadline for the Fall 3-Week-Intensive, dates 10/30-11/20. See here for more details on the program and how to apply. |
| Congratulations Summer 2010 graduates! TheFilmSchool is proud to welcome you to the alumni. |
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