Category: Works-In-Time

Carley Byers: “A Blank Space. It’s all I felt and all I saw…”

Writes Carley Byers (’21):

“You must have your eyes open. The habit of looking at things with curiosity should carry through in everything you do. Marvel is all around you.” – Enrique Martinez Celaya

I originally made this short film for my Creativity & Difference freshman seminar taught by Professor Preziuso. We were asked to create a project in any medium that reflected a subject we had covered in the class. My story stemmed from the changes, doubts, and questions I was having throughout my first semester. I felt very connected to one of our readings entitled, “Being an Artist” by Enrique Martinez Celaya and wanted to use that as my main source of inspiration.

I created this film to express that making art is so much more than just putting marks on canvas, molding clay, or piecing together clips for a film. An artist needs the courage to create, the strength to accept self-criticism and the criticism of others. Many times creators are stifled due to their own fears. I wanted this film to empathize with artists while also conveying to others the rewards and struggles of creating. There is a constant undiscussed pressure in art making which is so challenging yet beautiful. It’s that story I wanted to tell.

Ryan Vazquez: “She didn’t want you to forget your language”

Writes Professor Marika Preziuso:

Ryan’s film Broken was the final project he did for the Spring 2017 summative elective “Imagining Others: from Strangers to Cyborgs.” In Broken, Ryan reflects on his own and his family’s bi-lingual and bi-cultural background, using a speculative, sci-fiction lens. His inspiration for this work was the poetry collection “Cannibal” by Safiya Sinclair, which we read in class. Ryan graduated in Film/Video in May 2017.

 

Sara Boldt: Genesis

Adam and Eve, William Strang, c. 1915

Writes Sara Boldt (’20):

For my final project in Literary Traditions with Professor Leon Steinmetz, I created a more modern day Genesis. Instead of discovering a land untouched by humans, two individuals encounter two objects which symbolize larger themes or issues in our society today.

The video depicts a boy (actor is Jackson Boldt) and a girl (actor is Hannah Boldt) in an almost empty desert. There they come across a television and a mirror. The television represents technology. The mirror represents vanity. The video is meant to show temptation and the dangers that can come from it as well as our culture’s growing infatuation with technology and self-image.

I directed and edited the piece. I shot it at the Rhode Island desert in West Greenwich. I composed the music.

“A Sorry Sort I Am…”

Writes Professor Cheryl Clark:

After Poetry Workshop, Danie Grace (Animation ’19) wrote and designed a final book of poems in the Advanced Poetry Workshop I offer. She called her book Bittersweetner and, for her Animation II class, animated one of her poems. Out of play-dough on a 2D plane, she created this stop-motion animation called “A Sorry Sort I Am…”.

And she recites the poem to one and all on the spot!

“My empathetic response to the film & the treatment of its subjects”

Professor Dermot Smyth explains how students in his History of Documentary Film class use art works of their own to reach the center of films they study:

“Hands-on responses like these combined with research on the documentary they undertake give students a concrete sense of how documentaries work and change and represent the world.”