Category Archives: Film

Lights, Camera, What Now? Meet Saturday High Instructor Chris Gehl

Writer/director/producer, Art Center alumnus and Saturday High instructor Chris Gehl. Photo: Mike Winder

In a recent interview, The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola said, “The cinema language happened by experimentation—by people not knowing what to do.”

For Chris Gehl, an Art Center alumnus and a film instructor in Saturday High—Art Center College of Design’s program for high school students (grades 9–12)—venturing into unknown territory is par for the course. The Los Angeles-based writer/director/producer spends most of his Saturdays at South Campus, teaching Directing for Film and Writing for Film during the Spring and Fall terms and the Writing for Film and the Film Production workshops during the Summer.

With the beginning of the Spring Term less than two weeks away, we caught up with Gehl to ask him more about his Saturday High classes.

How much filmmaking experience do your incoming students have?

The nice thing about Saturday High is that it attracts a great cross section of the universe. Because we’re in Southern California, sometimes you get students who have parents or relatives in the industry. Then there are some students have more sophisticated tastes because they’ve been exposed to more film history. And some students come to class with no experience whatsoever. In fact, for some kids, this might be the only art education that they’re getting. So it’s a really nice mix.

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Don’t Miss Design Runway This Friday

Environmental Design student Belle Shang will present her BeWild winter accessories at Design Runway.

This Friday, Art Center College of Design will hold its annual Design Runway show at the College’s Hillside Campus. The show, which is free and open to the public, focuses on how industrial design and visual art students are expressing themselves through apparel design.

“This is a runway show unlike any other,” said Design Runway instructor Justine Parish of the event which marks the culmination of the course of the same name. “Apparel design at Art Center is less about fashion than it is an outlet for students from all departments to explore a new medium for their creativity. As a result, we have Product Design students creating performance sportswear for space travel, Illustration students creating jewelry, Transportation Design students creating high fashion shoes and everything in between.”

Continued after the jump.

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Jodie Foster Visits Art Center as Part of Film Department’s Distinguished Filmmakers Series

Dan Perri talks with Jodie Foster in the Ahmanson Auditorium. Photo: Chuck Spangler.

Actor-director-producer Jodie Foster visited a packed Ahmanson Auditorium earlier this afternoon for a discussion and Q&A with Film instructor Dan Perri as part of the Film Department’s Distinquished Filmmakers Series. Foster, who’s next starring in director Roman Polanski’s Carnage (trailer embedded below), shared with Art Center students her experiences as a director on the sets of Little Man Tate, Home for the Holidays and The Beaver, as well as her thoughts on filmmaking in general and a few of the great directors that she’s worked with.

Here are a few highlights from the event:

Foster on when she first became interested in directing: “When I was six years old I did a television show called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. One day, the director showed up and it was the other actor, Bill Bixby, and my mouth just hung open. That’s when I realized actors could be directors and I remember thinking that someday that’s what I wanted to do.”

On the importance of words: “I don’t write, but I love writing. I was a literature major and I’m all about words. That’s my connection. And that’s even my connection as an actor, strangely. I’m one of the few actors I know that connects with words first and images later. I don’t make action films, I make personal films, so I have to download my psyche onto the script before I even start shooting so that the film reflects my personal psychological evolution. If it doesn’t, then I’m not engaged.”

On working with producers: “I love the creative partnership between the producer and the director. In the world of studio movies, everybody has this idea that a producer is an antagonist. In the best of all possible worlds, the producer is your brother or sister. They’re your right hand person that goes through the entire process with you and that loves your child as much as you do. You’re there to create this thing together.”

On juggling producing and acting: “I prefer to direct and produce at the same time. Producing and acting is a bad idea. It makes for a very difficult relationship with the director. The director should never have to have a budget schedule conversation with another actor. The director should never have to have conversations about the costars with another actor. There are many conversations that shouldn’t happen between a director and an actor, and unfortunately when you’re producing a movie, you have to have those conversations.”

Continued after the jump.

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Alumnus Directs White Stripes Video for Deaf Professional Artists Network

Still from the "We're Going To Be Friends" video, directed by alumnus Nicolas Hill for D-PAN.

Check out this beautiful video of The White Stripes “We’re Going To Be Friends” directed by Film alumnus Nicolas Hill for the Deaf Professional Artist’s Network (D-PAN).

In the video–which has been featured on The Today Show, CBS News and has received more then 330,000 hits so far on YouTube–deaf and hard-of-hearing children sign the lyrics to the Stripes’sweet song about finding a new friend at the start of a new school year.

Hill, who graduated in 2001, is a co-founder of Lucky Airlines film production company, a company that specializes in commercials, music videos and industrial videos. D-PAN is an organization dedicated to promoting professional development and access to the entertainment, visual and media arts fields for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Head past the jump to see the video.

Alumnus Cuts Through the Fog with “Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn” [Video]

Still from Film alumnus Hoku Uchiyama's "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn" video.

Film alumnus Hoku Uchiyama FILM ’04 has directed one of the most imaginative music videos in recent history, “Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn,” for Evelyn Evelyn, the musical duo composed of Jason Webley and the Dresden Doll’s Amanda Palmer.

As Evelyn Evelyn, Webley and Palmer perform as conjoined twin sisters Eva and Lyn Neville. But rather than play up that aspect of the duo’s persona, Uchiyama instead mixed live action with traditional animation to make characters that the “sisters” draw on fogged-up windows come to life.

The playful animation, which is highly evocative of cartoons from the ’20s, fits the piano-driven vaudevillian ditty to a tee.

“The song determined the style of animation we used: that old ‘rubber hose’ style that you see in cartoons like ‘Steamboat Willie’ or the old Bosko Looney Tunes,” Uchiyama recently told Your Music Today. “Those things burned into my head as a kid and stayed with me. I sent the idea to Jason [Webley]. He and Amanda [Palmer] liked it, so off we went.”

See the video after the jump.

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In Case You Missed It

Still from the upcoming film "Lost and Found in Armenia," directed by Gor Kirakosian FILM '06.

There’s always something happening when it comes to Art Center alumni, students and faculty. Sometimes there’s almost too much happening!

  • Alumnus Gor Kirakosian FILM ’06  directed the upcoming Lost and Found in Armenia, which stars Jamie Kennedy (Malibu’s Most Wanted, TV’s The Jamie Kennedy Experiment) as an American in Armenia who is mistaken for a Turkish spy. Speaking with Fresno’s Fox affiliate KMPH-26, the film’s producer Vanessa McCaffrey said the movie, which releases early next year, is “My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets The Hangover.”
  • “I was a rookie, and it was one of my first arrests. I saw someone had forged their registration tag — I noticed it was the wrong typeface. You can’t fool an artist.” So says alumnus and Pasadena cop Victor Cass ILLU ’89 in the Pasadena Star-News, who has been chosen to help launch an art-inspired campaign for Door of Hope, an agency that helps transition families from homelessness to permanent housing.
  • Alumnus Roberto Chavez PHOT ’06, a photographer and a member of the Whittier Cultural Arts Commission, has reportedly saved Pictures of Children’s Stories, a mural by ceramic artist F. Carlton Ball that had been tucked away in a corner of the Whitwood Branch Library, from being either dismantled or destroyed.
  • The E-bike, the first-and-last-mile brainchild of alumnus Garbriel Wartofsky TRANS ’09 is heading into the final stages of pre-production. Wartofsky, who has been working on the project since his days at Art Center, describes E-Bike a “compact, lightweight, intuitively-folding electric assist bicycle designed to get you seamlessly from point A to B utilizing the city’s existing infrastructure.”
  • Scars by alumnus and film director Woo-Seong Lim FILM ’01 opened in Seoul, South Korea last week. The film, starring Park So-Yeon and Jung Hee-Tae, is based on a story by novelist Han Kang, and chronicles a destructive love affair between a perfectionist news anchor and a children’s book illustrator.

If you have any Art Center-related news items you’d like to share with the community, send us an email at editorial at artcenter dot edu.

Distinguished Filmmakers Series: Bill Duke [UPDATE 2]

Actor, director, producer and writer Bill Duke

Film Department instructors Dan Perri and David Kellogg will host actor, director, producer and writer Bill Duke on Tuesday, Nov. 1 as part of the Distinguished Filmmakers Series.

Duke became a familiar face to moviegoers in the hit comedy Car Wash and followed up that performance with unforgettable roles in films such as American Gigolo, Commando and Predator.

Duke transitioned into directing, helming such films as A Rage in Harlem, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit and Hoodlum, as well as dozens of episodes for T.V. shows including Miami Vice, New York Undercover and Strong Medicine.

Duke continues to act and direct–his latest film, the documentary Dark Girls, premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival–while also serving as a mentor for young African Americans aspiring to work in the performing arts.

Distinguished Filmmakers Series: Bill Duke
Tuesday, November 1, 2:00 p.m.
L.A. Times Media Center

See a trailer for Duke’s Dark Girls documentary after the break.

UPDATE 2: This event has been moved up a week, from November 8 to November 1.

UPDATE: This event was originally scheduled for October 4.

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Tarsem Singh helped R.E.M. Lose its Religion (video)

Still from R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" video

After 31 years together, rock band R.E.M.–composed of founding members singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills–recently surprised their fans by calling it quits.

Though the group crafted a number of songs that entered the zeitgeist, including “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” “Everybody Hurts” and “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” they are perhaps best known for “Losing My Religion” from their 1991 album Out of Time.

The song became a cultural juggernaut despite the fact that it was built around a mandolin riff and featured lyrics that some misinterpreted as being a critique of organized religion (in fact, the phrase “I’m losing my religion” is a Southern expression whose meaning is akin to “I’m at the end of my rope” or “I’m at my wit’s end”). Regardless of the reasons behind the song becoming a hit, it would be impossible to separate the importance that the song’s video, directed by Art Center alumnus Tarsem Singh FILM ’90, had in propelling it into the stratosphere.

See the video after the break.

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POSTPONED: Distinguished Filmmakers Series: Bill Duke

NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED.

Film Department instructors Dan Perri and David Kellogg will host featuring actor, director, producer and writer Bill Duke at the first Distinguished Filmmakers Series event of the term on Tuesday, Oct. 4.

Duke became a familiar face to moviegoers in the hit comedy Car Wash, following up with intense, unforgettable performances in films such as American Gigolo, Commando, Predator, X-Men: Last Stand and many more. Duke made the transition to successful feature director with a string of well-received films, including A Rage in Harlem, Deep Cover, Hoodlum, The Cemetery Club and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.

Concurrently, Perri helmed dozens of TV series episodes for hit shows including Knots Landing, Miami Vice, Crime Story, Matlock, and PBS’s American Playhouse. Duke continues to act and direct for film and TV while generously serving as mentor for young African Americans aspiring to work in the performing arts.

This event is open to all Art Center students, alumni, faculty and staff.

Distinguished Filmmakers Series: Bill Duke
Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2 p.m.
L.A. Times Media Center

Kicking Things Off With Kickstarter


Transportation Design alum Gabriel Wartofsky has started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to build his lightweight, compact, folding electric bike for commuters. (Plans are to launch his Conscious Commuter at Art Center later this year.) So far, backers have pledged $17,045 of his $25,000 goal needed to bring his bike to market. (The deadline to pledge is Sept. 29.) KCET just ran a story on Wartofsky—be sure to check it out.

Another project is currently on Kickstarter, this one created by a group of Art Center students for a class project. They are looking for funding to help them film and produce a short film inspired by an epic DC Comics vignette. The six-day shoot will take place throughout Pasadena with sets built from scratch at Art Center. Students leading the project are Domenic Moen (writer/director), Stephen Reedy (editor), Chris Saul (cinematographer) and Jake Viramontez (producer).

Check them out: