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THURSDAY, AUGUST 18,2011
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
COMMENTARY
Film school dean doubles as 'Smurfs' director
PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
LOS ANGELES — Veteran movie producer Jordan Kerner spent nearly 10 years finding a way to make "The Smurfs" which earned $35.6 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. But it's not his long track record in Hollywood, which includes producing everything from "Less Than Zero" to "The Mighty Ducks," that interests me most. It's his other job: dean of the school of filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
I went to film school myself at Northwest University, back when we still shot with 16-milimeter cameras, lugged around Nagra sound recorders and edited footage on ancient Moviolas. Wed occasionally be treated to lectures from visiting filmmakers, whod regale us with tall tales about their exploits. But if you wanted any real-life experience, you had to move to L.A. and find a job. Thanks to Kerner's innovative ideas, undergrads at
"We set it up as part of our internship program, but not just to get coffee, but to see how movies are really made," he said the other day, sitting in his office on the Sony lot. Every two weeks, a new group of students would establish residency on the film, listening to budget discussions he would have with the studio or sitting in on script revision meetings among Kerner, the screenwriters and director Raja Gosnell.
Kerner has recruited a host of faculty members who still have their day jobs, which helps give students a grounding in the kind of problem-solving necessary to survive on a film set. Through a shadowing program, students get to spend weeks at a time on movie sets, seeing their professor in action. Nearly 80 students spent time on "Smursf"
"During the shoot, if Raja went
UNCSA are getting an education not just in theory and production but in the often less-than-glamorous aspects of life in the trenches of Hollywood.
up to talk to an actor, our kids would be right there with him. They also got to spend time with our editors, visual effects supervisor, sound designers and other crew members. Sometimes the discussions were difficult, but that was the whole point — it's a way to learn the whys and why nots of filmmaking." (With it being 2011, students had to sign release forms promising not to blog about what they saw.)
From the point of view of Andrew Porter, a 2010 graduate of the school's screenwriting program, the shadowing experience on "Smurfs" was an eye-opener. "It was pretty amazing to watch the drafts of all the scripts come through, and see what stayed and what was replaced," he said.
Tom Ackerman, a veteran director of photography on such films as "Anchorman" and "Balls of Fury," has been teaching cinematography at UNCSA for three years. He's also a big believer in the shadowing process, having brought a flock of students to spend time with him on
"Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip Wrecked," which will hit theaters this Christmas. He also has his students listen in on his conversations with his agent so they can develop an understanding of the demands of the marketplace.
Kerner never imagined himself being a film school dean — in fact, he never went to film school himself. But after surviving a freak staph infection and enduring the disappointing showing of a pet project, 2006's "Charlotte's Web," Kerner was looking for a new challenge. He became dean in 2007, agreeing to split his time between Los Angeles and Winston-Salem, where his wife and three daughters now live.
UNCSA, a state school with 270 film students and tuition far below institutions like USC or AFI, has its share of prominent young albums, notably director David Gordon Green ("Pineapple Express"), writer-director Jody Hill ("Observe and Report") and screenwriter Travis Beacham ("Clash of the Titans"), who often return to share
their experiences. But Kerner felt the school needed more outside professionals on the faculty, so he recruited a host of industry pros, including producer Bob Gosse and Peter Bogdanovich, who teaches a freshman film class.
My biggest concern with today's film schools is that they tend to offer students far more instruction in technique than in actual ideas.
But the student films I watched from UNCSA were loaded with strong ideas, wit and imagination
— which may come as a bit of a surprise, given that the dean is the guy producing commercial fare like "The Smurfs" Kerner, though, sees his work as dean as contributing to enhancing the business more than any one movie he might make.
"When I arrived, we had way too many student films that were full of close-ups of smoking guns, employing the imagery of video games," Kerner says. "Filmmaking isn't just about coolness and pose — you need bigger subjects to tell."
So Kerner started an American
Immersion project, where students gain a deeper understanding of character and story by spending several weeks at places like the Veterans Artificial Limb Hospital in Philadelphia and Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans.
"They can't take cameras or recording devices — just a pad and pen," he says. "The whole idea is to go out and get to know people, hear their stories and get under their skin."
COMMENTARY
As much as Kerner would enjoy seeing his students make lofty art, he is enough of a realist to realize that they also need what it takes to actually land a job. Since much of the job market today is geared toward the Web, animation and TV commercials, Kerner is a proponent of short-form storytelling.
"Our kids are going to have to think clearly in short bursts, because that's where the action is," he says. "But we want them to have their own voice, because having a unique voice is what sets you apart from everyone else."
Last 'Harry Potter' scene grows up before saying goodbye
GEOFF BOUCHER
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
LOS ANGELES — No other scene in the eight "Harry Potter" films created more angst for filmmakers than the epilogue of the final movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2," a movie that last week crossed the $1 billion mark in the worldwide box office.
There were no chained dragons, hairy hippogriffs or crackling magic energies in the sequence — it's a few minutes of quiet dialogue between parents and their children in a train station — but the anxiety of it all was so smothering that the franchise's star, Daniel Radcliffe, at one point wanted to sit out of the scene.
"I think they should do it with
older actors and just leave us out of the scene." Radcliffe said two years ago during a quiet moment on the stone-floored movie set where he has spent half of his working life and half of his life working. "If that's what going to look best, that's what we should do. It's too important that the ending is done right."
(By the way, this is an article you shouldn't read if you haven't seen the film and want to remain in the dark as you walk into theaters.)
The sticky issue for Radcliffe, director David Yates and the rest of the "Potter" team was the fact that the epilogue takes place 19 years after the story's climax at the smoldering Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In it, Harry and his now-adult friends, Hermione
and Ron, are sending off their own children to study at Hogwarts. The plan was to "age up" Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and other young stars of the Warner Bros. franchise so they could convincingly play their elder selves.
On the set in 2009, Radcliffe was leary of the plan to wear rubber fixtures on his jaw and a false hairline to age to 37. "I worry it will be a distraction," Radcliffe said. "I don't want people staring at our faces and getting distracted from that moment.
For Radcliffe, the answer was to find adult actors to play the older roles. It would be difficult for any moment in any film to bear all the weight coming down on the "Deathly Hallows" epilogue.
For all the billions of dollars the
"Potter" producer David Heyman was thinking of that when he told Radcliffe that there was no way that three "strangers" could deliver the final lines of the main characters right before the final fade to black.
"After all we have been through with these characters, the way that a generation has grown up with them, they need to be the ones on screen when it's time to bring it to a close," said Heyman, who was a key decision-maker when Radcliffe and his costars were cast in their roles back in 2000. "There's an ex-
movies and books have piled up, the filmmakers also had to account for the emotional connection of, say, a 20-year-old moviegoer who had literally grown up with this vivid tale of loyalty, courage and loss.
pectation — even if it is not articulated — that they need to be on the screen when it's coming to an end."
The scene was finally filmed last May. A few weeks later, Radcliffe was happy to say the challenge had been met. The relief in his voice was clear even in the trans-Atlantic phone call from London. "I think we figured it out," he said. "We did it with prosthetics, in the end, and I'm sure there will be little bits of visual effects for retouching on those moments when we do a close-up. It's also a challenge to make someone who is 19 or 20
— an age where their face is still changing — and make them a fully grown adult. I think they looked fantastic, though, and, if I do say so, particularly mine."
Not everyone agreed.
Some images of the made-uplio leaked to the Web, and some fans thought Radcliffe's visage had gone too far into Old Man Potter territory. "Rupert (Grint, who plays Ron) looked like he was about 75 years old. With the triple chin and the belly, he looked like he had really lived as a lush." Heyman said. "We knew we needed to rework the makeup."
So, in December, long after the movie had wrapped, Yates and the producers summoned their young stars back to Leavesden Studios for a second, salvaging effort.
The epilogue was reshot, and director Yates said it was "the right thing to do" despite the expense, inconvenience and murmurs of negativity in the press.
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