The Observer, December 9, 2005
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 13
Student filmmakers pave new ground at Case
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There are many ways to tell a story. Some use pen and paper; others, tape recorders; others, art. Case students Jesse Barrett-Mills and Gideon Spero tell theirs with the camcorder and editing booth; they are pursuing film-making as a career and hobby, respectively. Yes, that's right. Film-making.
Barrett-Mills is a senior triple majoring in English, sociology, and film/film directing – a major he designed and created on his own. He first got into film-making during a high school trip to Ireland. While in Belfast, he befriended a taxi driver and they drove together all over the city. The driver told him about the city's history and the reasons for all the violence in Belfast. He taped the entire thing, and brought back the makings of his first feature-length film: Belfast, A Sad Reality.
The feedback from Belfast is what first made him consider film-making as a viable career. While applying to colleges, he discovered the textbook Understanding Movies, by Louis Giannetti, then a Case professor. The book changed the way he forever looked at movies.
Initially, Case was disappointing for Barrett-Mills. Giannetti retired at the beginning of his freshman year, so Barrett-Mills never got to take any classes with the man who inspired him attend.
He continued to learn and expand his portfolio on his own. In the summer of 2003, he took an International Film Workshop in Rockport, Maine. The seven-week class taught him the fundamentals of film-making.
The summer after that, he worked on the set of a film called The Flip Side. Josh Durham, the director, helped him learn about film-making first hand. "[He] wrote and directed the film I worked on … basically whenever anything went wrong on the set, i.e. a shot took too long, an actor quit, poor morale of the crew, etc. he would tell me about the experience and what he learned," said Barrett-Mills.
While putting his film major together, Barrett-Mills drew classes from the English department, taking screenwriting, journalism, and film classes, all designed to complement his skills in creating documentaries and narrative films. "Well I'm an English major, but at the same time [while] all of those seemed like very interesting courses …each one of those classes I can tie into what I want to do with film," he said.
He also continued his education by creating three documentaries at Case with friends he made at the workshop. His most recent is a documentary called Seven Men and features seven international students in an open interview, who were told to discuss the subjects of their choice. The film demonstrates how people from completely different backgrounds and places are drawn to many of the same subjects, like poverty, race, and foreign policy. Seven Men is a possible entrant in the Sundance Film Festival.
Spero is another filmmaker at Case, though he approaches the art from a different angle. An English major with a concentration in film, Spero recently submitted two shorts to the Ohio Independent Film Festival. He interweaves film and music in his pieces.
He first decided he wanted to work with film when his father told him what directors' roles in movies were, and his shorts include a family member's bar mitzvah and one of Spero's recent trips to New York City, entitled NYC03.
NYC03 begins in a small hotel room. Gideon packs his bags, and heads for the freeway. As the piece progresses, set to a song by Fat Boy Slim, the viewer sees the trip to and footage from all over the city. Gideon sends the viewer reeling through a series of clips of New York's subways, streets, buildings, and citizens.
Views from the air, shots in Grand Central Station, Times Square, and much more are all rolled into five minutes of packed film. The viewer emerges gasping for breath, hit with a visual overload.
Spero does not plan on pursuing filmmaking as a career; he expects to work instead in web design, pursuing film-making as a hobby. "I don't want to put all my eggs in the film basket; it's very hard to make it in the industry," he said.
He plans to make movies in his spare time and continue submitting them to independent film festivals.
Barrett-Mills will most likely attend grad school for film directing next year, at the American Film Institute or one of five other schools with film directing, but still looks favorably upon his time at Case. "I don't regret coming here in the slightest bit… Case actually has been really awesome about [my film major], there are quite a few students and faculty who are very interested in film," he said. He has several projects lined up: a documentary about the aborigines of Australia, a return to Belfast, and a new screenplay to produce.
