Brown Motion Pictures, formerly Brown Student Television, will host its biannual film launch premiere tonight in Salomon 101. The premiere will feature five films written, directed, produced and performed by undergraduates.
The group, which adopted its new name to more accurately reflect its current role on campus, used to predominately produce television episodes. It has now made a formal transition to focus on short films under the leadership of Managing Director Dorothy Thurston ’14 and former Outreach Coordinator Alexis Aurgemma ’13, said Managing Director Susan Chen ’15.
“It’s the first time we’re promoting Brown Motion Pictures as a brand name to the Brown community,” she said of the event.
But the group’s mission to serve as a forum for creativity and instruction has not changed. “In one sense, it’s a pre-professional organization like many others that you find in college, so it is about learning how to make short films, how to work together, what are the different parts of the crew,” said Yotam Tubul ’14, director of the film “Marvin.”
“But its dual mission is also (as) an educational group,” Tubul added. “So you want to make your short film, but you also want to teach other people how to make a short film. It’s both collaborative and a lot of learning.”
Following a screenwriting competition this summer, BMP’s executive board and screenplay coordinators selected five original screenplays. The screenplays were then assigned to directors and teams to produce films for the premiere, following hours of shooting and editing.
The selection of films for the evening includes comedies “Marvin” and “Dream Girl,” black comedy “Parlor,” drama “Two Bikers” and horror movie “Abimor.”
Screenwriters have much to anticipate before the premiere: Many have yet to view the final products. “I spoke with the directors really briefly at the beginning of the process,” said Dylan Felt ’16, writer of “Marvin.”
“I got to talk to my director, my producer a little bit, same with the actors and the rest of the team,” he added. “After that, I sort of stepped back … I wanted to see what happens when I write something and give it to somebody else to turn into a real thing.”
But this hands-off dynamic can be stressful.
“From afar, it seems like the process has been difficult,” said Ian Garrity ’16, writer of “Two Bikers.”
Beyond sharing an interest in screenwriting, Garrity and Felt live together at Brown.
“All summer long we were sending various drafts of our scripts back and forth to each other and editing them for each other,” Felt said.
“I love the fact that there are all these different films going on in it at the same time so that each one is kind of its own separate unit but all part of the same organization together,” said “Dream Girl” Director Hannah Pullen-Blasnik ’16.
“It’s been great talking to some of the other directors,” she added. “We’re all kind of doing our own thing, but at the same time … it provides a really nice community for people.”
Thurston said she is impressed by students’ dedication. “It takes an extraordinary amount of time to make these projects come together and you really have to be on top of everything. It’s a huge amount of coordination on everybody’s part and a lot of working together,” she said.
ADVERTISEMENT
