Category Archives: Film

From muscle machines to dinosaur skulls: Art Center’s March 2014 alumni notes

It’s that time of month again. Time, that is, to catch up on the creative undertakings Art Center’s talented diaspora of alums have been plotting, planning, pitching, prototyping, publishing, publicizing, producing and plying. And that’s just the p’s.

Dive into the following digest of alumni accomplishments and works-in-progress. And for those alums among us, be sure to clue us in on your own news and notes for inclusion in our next dispatch. We don’t want to miss anything. This is Art Center, after all. And we’re nothing if not completists.

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Art Center in the News: February-March 2014

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Art Center students, faculty, staff and alumni have been making news while making their mark at on the art and design worlds. For those who may have missed a headline or two, we curated this handy highlight reel of our recent media clips:

Don’t miss two lengthy, live interview segments we arranged for Interaction Design Chair, Maggie Hendrie and ACCD student Alex Cabunoc on the new cable program TakePart Live—a show tailored to Millennials (age 18-34) that reaches 40 million-plus households through Participant Media’s Pivot TV network. (Participant Media is the award-winning, socially and politically progressive production company responsible for An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, Lincoln, among other enlightening and edifying films and TV shows).

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Explore the art of border crossing with Morgan Fisher: scholar, sculptor, filmmaker and conceptual artist

Morgan Fisher's New Alien Pendant Pair Paintings

Morgan Fisher’s New Alien Pendant Pair Paintings

Conceptual artist and filmmaker, Morgan Fisher, will discuss his vast and eclectic body of work at Art Center College of Design on Tuesday, March 25 at 7:30 p.m. at the Los Angeles Times Media Center.

At first glance, it’s hard to connect the dots comprising the details of Morgan Fisher’s early biography. He was born in Washington, D.C. in 1942. He studied the history of 19th and 20th century art at Harvard University. Then he studied film production in Los Angeles, first at USC and then at UCLA.

His creative path started to coalesce, however, once he landed in L.A. and committed himself to filmmaking. He began making independent films in 1968 while complementing his own avant-garde filmmaking, working as a teacher at Art Center and in various capacities on Hollywood productions, including as Roger Corman’s editor. Fisher’s films have been shown at festivals such as Pesaro, Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Berlin, and New York; and at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern, and Centre Pompidou.

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Art, science, wearable tech and viral video: Art Center at SXSW Interactive

There are as many ways to describe a day immersed in South by Southwest Interactive programming as there were LED screens lighting up every available space around the Convention Center in downtown Austin. But, like many of the tech pilgrims who made their way to this digital mecca, our epic first day at the conference was spent soaking in a free-flowing cascade of ideas about how innovation and technology can be leveraged to improve the way we interact with our work, home, communities, passions and the larger world around us. And at the end of an enlightening eight hours’ worth of events, we came away feeling more energized than exhausted—as if we had just taken a multi-vitamin full of more than the daily recommended amount of inspiration.

This is noteworthy because the same cannot be said of the movie or music components of SXSW, or any other festival for that matter. Skeptical? Good. Read on.

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From Wong Kar-Wai to Jean-Luc Godard: Art Center’s streaming video collection is a cineaste’s paradise

FEAT Brochure.inddBack in the old days the only way to see a film was to wait for it to play in your local theater. If you missed it: Tough luck. You lost your chance. Then home video – videotapes, laserdiscs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs — came along and changed all that.

This advent seemed to make film viewing much more convenient. Or did it? Sometimes the movie you want is checked out. To borrow a DVD from the library, you still have to leave the house and go someplace. And then there’s always the risk that the disc might be scratched. It’s enough to drive a person crazy.

Well, all of that is about to change. It’s time to say goodbye to those hassles now that the Art Center library has just acquired a massive streaming video subscription called Alexander Street Video! This collection currently contains 26,000 videos. All of the films have been shown at major festivals and thousands are award winners. The collection includes films by many of the world’s leading contemporary directors, including Michael Haneke, Wong Kar-Wai, Andrei Zvyagintsev, Koji Wakamatsu and Jean-Luc Godard.

Some of the most interesting films hail from Asia. The Art Community will have access to work by acclaimed Chinese director Xie Fei (Black Snow; Woman from the Lake of Scented Souls; A Mongolian Tale), Iranian new-wave director Dariush Mehrjui (The Cycle; The Lodgers; Mum’s Guest) and leading Indonesian director Garin Nugroho (And the Moon Dances; A Poet; Bird Man Tale).

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Oscar-nominated VFX whiz explains what makes an award-worthy special effect

Dan_Bartolucci_IMG_6262_chuckspangler

Film instructor and alumnus Dan Bartolucci is in demand as an Autodesk Flame® artist and VFX editor.

With the Oscars just days away, we decided to chat with Film instructor and alumnus Dan Bartolucci who, as a member of the Lola Visual Effects team, is Academy Award nominated for best visual effects for Lone Ranger. Visual effects tends to be one of the more mysterious and mystifying categories, capable of stealing the spoils of a perfectly predicted Oscar pool from the savviest of movie buffs. With that in mind, we sought answers from the ultimate insider. Bartolucci is an esteemed Autodesk Flame® artist and VFX editor who remains very dedicated to his alma mater, where he currently teaches two classes. He can’t reveal the title of his current project but we’ll be sure to find out and let you know when it’s available for public consumption.

Immediately after completing Art Center’s undergraduate film program in 2010, Bartolucci ignited a VFX career that’s been soaring ever since. He has conjured many memorable feats of special effects magic, including shrinking Chris Evans in Captain America, aging the lead actors at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and emaciating Bella in Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.

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A young Art Center film student finds her tribe at Sundance 2014

Second term Film student, Laura Holliday (left) poses at Sundance with her high school mentor, Betty Bailey

Second term Film student, Laura Holliday (right) poses at Sundance with her high school mentor, Betty Bailey

I always assumed I had no business attending large prestigious film festivals until I had a movie showing there. So, as an undergraduate film student in only my second term at Art Center, I figured it would be a long time before I ended up at one of them. However, after getting the opportunity to attend the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, I can say confidently that any film student or movie lover has a place there, and can benefit boundlessly from being immersed in a scene ripe with creative energy and opportunities to connect.

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Rock ‘n’ roll soldier conquers Art Center…and Hollywood

Sam Gonzalez

Samuel Gonzalez Jr. Photo by Lindzee Meltzer.

“There is no true terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it.” — Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock’s wisdom provided the inspiration for the concept of “CATASTROPHE,” a month-long exhibition of elaborately staged, large-scale, dark-toned photos created by undergraduate Film alum Samuel Gonzalez Jr. opening today (Jan. 28) at the ArcLight Theaters in Hollywood.

The 30 photographs on display in the theater lobby through March 28 juxtapose surrealist images illustrating the turmoil of the human condition against period landscapes, all the while alluding to humanity’s relationship to the artificiality of a heightened cinematic experience. The psychological narrative animating the photos informs the show’s subtextual ideas about the collision between film and reality. Gonzalez’ eerie pieces blend beauty with horror, love with betrayal and truth with despair, suggesting an open world of endless interpretations and possibilities.

Gonzalez has gained an intimate understanding of this particular confluence of ideas, after spending much of his life creatively interpreting the world around him to create new opportunities for himself. As a young Army recruit stationed in Iraq, Gonzalez’ deployed a creative outlet to offset the stress of combat by starting a rock band called Madison Avenue (after the ironically named path on which his barracks were built). That experience paved the way (financially) for him to attend Art Center’s film department and has since provided the inspiration for the mini-series he’s currently developing with one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers.

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