lifestyles
Keith Schneider, Wichita senior, edits film using a somewhat outdated tabletop editing machine. When the theater and film department receives its new editing equipment, this device no longer will be used.
Stepping up by stepping out
The Lawrence Film Commission hopes its benefit the night of the Academy Awards will help update KU's Oldfather Studio
Story by Susanna Lööf, Special to the Kansan Photos by Paul Kotz
With Oldfather Studios' current equipment, Schneider must physically cut and tape the film during the editing process. The new machine would allow students to edit digitally.
or movie lovers, the Monday after spring break is not simply the dreadful day when classes resume. It is also the night of the Academy Awards, a night of excitement and glamour. This year, students can experience some of the excitement and
glamour by attending a benefit party.
The Lawrence Film Commission will sponsor an Academy awards benefit party at 7 p.m. March 27 at the Granada Theater, 1020 Massachusetts St., to celebrate the Oscars and to benefit Kluwer's Oldfather Studio. Tickets cost $10 for students and $15 for non-students and are on sale today in the Kansas Union between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. and at Oldfather Studio, 1621 W Ninth St.
The party will help Oldfather Studio, which is used by more than 200 KU students taking film classes.
"The money will be used to buy equipment for digital video editing," said Chuck Berg, coordinator of KU's film studies program.
The studio needs $5,000 to buy video equipment. If the party does not raise enough funds, the film department will try to get the money from the University budget or find other your. Posted
"But I am consciously optimistic about the party," he said.
Berg said the new equipment would give students many advantages. He compared the editing system used at Oldfather Studio today to an old mechanical typewriter and the digital video equipment with a modern word processor.
"It is really a state-of-the-art technique," he said.
"It is still solid, and it still works, but it is inhibiting." he said.
"It is really a state-of-the-art technique," he said. Keith Schneider, Wichita senior, said the equipment used in the studio today was similar to equipment used 20 to 30 years ago.
The University has used equipment at Oldfather Studio for about 21/2 years. During that time, students have used a flat-bed editing technique that requires the editor to cut the filmmark in parts and glue the parts together with rubber cement.
"With this technology, you are physically moving little pieces of film around." Schneider said.
The flat-bed technique causes a few frames of the film to be lost at each editing.
"Your film gets shorter each time you edit it, so you have to be really sure of what you are doing." Schneider said.
With digital editing equipment, the editing is done with computers, which means that the editor can try different solutions without worrying about shortening the film.
"You don't even have to touch the film," Schneider said. "It will all be there on a computer hard drive."
Berg said that digital equipment made the editing process faster.
"It would give students more time to work on the artistic aspects of their films," he said.
The digital equipment also would give film students an advantage in the job market, Schneider said.
"The next generation of film students will have it so much easier," Schneider said. "The education will give so many more possibilities of getting jobs."
Schneider said that students who knew how to use digital editing equipment could get better jobs.
"They wouldn't have to work their way up as much," he said.
Since Schneider is a senior, he will not be able to use the new equipment, which could be in use by
"I can't be bitter, because I have learned so much, and the department has been so good to me," he said. "I am just glad that the up-and-coming students will have it better."
Berg also said that the digital equipment would attract film students to KU.
Nancy Longhurst, head of the Academy Awards party committee, said the benefit was planned because the studio enhanced the film department and attracted filmmakers to Lawrence.
"It will help us attract the best and brightest," he said.
The new equipment could attract filmmakers to choose Lawrence as a site to make their films, he said.
next fall. But he does not have any bitter feelings toward the University for not buying the equipment earlier.
"It can also help the local economy," he said.
"One film can produce millions of dollars in revenue for the state of Kansas," she said.
Berg said the new equipment would benefit more than just film students.
The Academy Awards Benefit Party will be held in the style of a Hollywood gala.
Party-goers are asked to wear black and white
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Party-goers are asked to wear black and white. "It doesn't matter if it is formal or jeans and T-shirt," she said.
"We will also have a red carpet and introduce people as they come in," Longhurst said.
Each person who buys a ticket for the event can compete for prizes by predicting the Oscar winners The person who picks the most winners will win a trip for two to Hollywood.
$ \star $ The event will be held at 7 p.m. March 27 at the Granada Theater, 1020 Massachusetts St.
The Academy Awards will be broadcast live on a giant screen in the theater.
A Night with Oscar
Tickets are on sale today in the Kansas Union 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and at Oldfather Studio, 1621 W. Ninth St.
Tickets are on sale today for the Lawrence Film Commission's Academy Awards party to benefit the University's Oldfather Studio.
- Tickets cost $10 for students and $15 for non-students.
If Longhurst and the other members of the Lawrence Film Commission are lucky, David Letterman, who is master of ceremonies at the Academy Awards ceremony, will say "HI" to the audience in Lawrence. The commission sent Letterman a letter entitled "Ten Reasons Why Dave Should Say 'Hi' to the Lawrence Film Commission at the Oscars."
"David Letterman is silly enough that he would do something like that," Longhurst said.
The Lawrence Film Commission plans to sponsor an Academy Awards party each year.
LEAD STORY
■ Police in East Patchogue, N.Y., filed a false-report charge against Nicholas Lalla, 32, in January after he had filed a complaint against his estranged wife for allegedly slapping him. Lalla played for police an audiotape he had made in which slapping sounds are heard amidst his yelling. "Don't hit me!" When police informed Lalla's ex-wife of the audiotape, she played for them a videotape she secretly had made of him making the audiotape. He was shown yelling "Don't hit me!" outside her house after she had left to go back inside.
COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
A 25-year-old woman was abducted in September from her home in Carrollton, Ohio, by a man police identified as Donald Eugene Bright. 37.
According to police,
Bright took her to a motel near
Pittsburgh,
Pa, where he raped
her. She
In October, in Jakarta, Indonesia, authorities discovered one of the largest caches of drugs ever found in a smuggler's stomach. Basudev Parajuli, 26, of Katmandu, was carrying at least 103 tubes containing 2.6 pounds of heroin valued at $460,000.
LEAD STORY
escaped from the room and, shoeless, ran along a road, avoiding Bright's pursuing car, periodically making collect phone calls for help. So many motorists passed by refused to help her that when police finally picked her up, she had run 15 miles from the motel.
In July, James Dixon, 29, demanded that police come to his home in Syracuse, N.Y., to listen to his complaint about drug-trafficking in the neighborhood around his apartment house. After the visit, one officer stayed behind as the police car pulled away from the building. Almost immediately, reported the officer, a stream of customers knocked on Dixon's door to buy drugs. A search turned up 84 bags of crack cocaine.
In December in Stuart, Fla., Francis Reichert, 58, inadvertently dislodged a cherry pit, one-half inch in diameter, from his nose during a routine visit to his doctor. Reichert he stuffed cherry pits up his nose to impress playmates when he was a kid, but had not done that since he was 8 years old. Reichert's doctor said the pit may be the longest-standing object ever discovered in someone's nose.
■ According to a November Wall Street Journal story, a traveler called a Hyatt Hotel in Dubai to ask that it send him luggage that he had left behind. The luggage had been searched for identification by the hotel and was found to contain towels, silverware, a clock and a bathroom scale, all taken from the man's hotel room.
FAMILY VALUES
■ In November, Donna Dunik, 63, was arrested for trying to smuggle drugs to her incarcerated son in Warren, Ohio. In balloons carried in her socks and bra were marijuana, cocaine, vitamin B (to cut the cocaine) and yeast (an ingredient for homemade wine). And in October in Lancaster, Ohio, Elsie Sheets, 54, was indicted for helping her son and his friends dispose of the bodies of two schoolmates they allegedly killed. According to prosecutors, after the disposal, Sheets brought the kids home and made pizza for them.
.