March 25, 2008
Prizewinning SOC film screened at festival
Swimming with squids would take more equipment than they can borrow from their schools, and flying to India to film the hatching of cobra eggs would cost quite a bit more than the average student can command.
But the winners of the Third Annual Student Environmental Short Film Festival, including a group from AU, are off to a promising start in the world of environmental filmmaking. The contest was part of the 16th Annual Environmental Film Festival, which screened 115 films from 30 countries in 12 days in Washington, including at AU.
The student competition was started as a way “to empower young filmmakers, the future communicators,” said panelist Philippe Cousteau, chief ocean correspondent for Animal Planet. Entries came from as far as New Zealand, but the second-place winner was closer to home: Living on the Edge, a film created by students at AU’s School of Communication (SOC). It tells the story of erosion by following the efforts of two women to save their retirement home, perched on a cliff, from collapsing into the Chesapeake Bay.
The winning films were shown to an audience that also came to hear tips on how to break into the business from top pros, including Cousteau; award-winning filmmaker Justine Schmidt; Anne Tarrant, of Discovery Channel and National Geographic; and SOC professors and filmmakers Sandy Cannon-Brown and Chris Palmer.
“The most critical equipment is really a good story,” Cousteau advised the would-be filmmakers in the audience. Others agreed. While it may seem that every conceivable subject has been filmed, scientists are always uncovering new information, Tarrant said.
A filmmaker who sees the story potential in some new findings about dolphins, or who can find a way to film beavers that tells their story in a novel way, can find an audience even in the most seemingly saturated market.
Money and contacts are crucial, of course. But these come with time, particularly if you volunteer at festivals, go to screenings, and build skills and networks in graduate courses. Tarrant started off with a passion for animals but no contacts, and broke into the business after several years of volunteering.
Once you’re in the business, treat others well, and they’ll remember it, Tarrant said.
“You can’t say enough about working hard, being pleasant, and not burning bridges.” There will be frustrations everywhere, but “remember the good things,” and recognize that “the intern you had working for you is going to be your boss someday,” she said.
Formal science training is helpful, she said, but not necessary. What is necessary, though, is a passionate desire to communicate to a mass audience and motivate people to be stewards of the natural world.
Schmidt, too, had no particular background before ending up at the American University in Cairo, where she got a job at the university’s center for TV journalism that led to her first break as newswriter and anchor. She now makes environmental films around the world, and has stories to tell of getting stung by a scorpion and falling off an elephant while searching for tigers.
When making films “be ethical, and be patient,” she said, always remembering that a filmmaker’s pursuit of a good shoot can cause anxiety to animals, or push them to leave a location, or disrupt their reproductive cycles, or otherwise interfere with their lives.
Cannon-Brown noted that being an “environmental film maker” doesn’t just mean filming nature; it also means recognizing one’s impact. “Every filmmaker should be ‘environmental,’” she said. The Center for Social Media and Center for Environmental Filmmaking, both at SOC, are currently working on a project to come up with a code of green filmmaking.
Cannon-Brown’s students at SOC were among the winning filmmakers. Second prize went to AU’s Living on the Edge, created for an SOC class taught by Cannon-Brown on environmental filmmaking.
The first-prize winner was Fish and Cow, from a Montana State University student, about ranchers working to save an endangered fish population. Third place went to Close the Drapes by two Columbia University students, a comedic episode of several minutes about two environmentally conscious hit men.
Living on the Edge, and others from the class, will air on Maryland Public Television. The winning film can be viewed at the Web site for Earth Echo International.
