Bearish on movies

CONWAY — Right out of college, Joe Dull was living a young film buff’s dream.

He’d left Ohio at 18 to move to Southern California, hoping to make it in the movies. He enrolled at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., got his film school degree and started looking for work.

“As soon as I got out of college,” Dull said, “I lucked into editing a feature film, and that kind of started me off.”

He paused a moment, then added: “It was the worst movie ever made.”

The title evades him now, nearly 25 years later — A Stepson’s Revenge, maybe? Or A Need for Revenge? — but that doesn’t matter since you can’t find a copy of it anywhere these days. Which is something of a relief.

“They almost got a distribution deal, and I was praying, and it fell through,” Dull said.

Still, he wouldn’t trade that experience for anything, and he tells his students in the undergraduate digital filmmaking program at the University of Central Arkansas not to pass up such chances, either.

“You have to make bad stuff to get to the good stuff, to understand how to do anything with the good stuff,” said Dull, an associate professor in his seventh year at UCA. “That’s especially true in editing. If you’re handed good footage, it’s hard to screw up. But if you get bad footage and take that and make it good, that teaches you how to take the good stuff and make it great, and take great stuff and make it amazing.”

One of Arkansas’ better-known filmmakers, Craig Renaud, who with his brother, Brent, has created acclaimed documentaries (Off to War, Warrior Champions), said what the students are learning at UCA is directly applicable in the marketplace.

“I think one of the most important things about the program is it’s a very realistic and active program, in the sense people are getting real training,” Renaud said. “You need real-world skills. [UCA] is one of those places in the state that’s done a good job of that.”

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE

And that’s key, despite advances in technology that have put filmmaking into the hands — quite literally — of millions of people, even if they’re just posting a video taken with their smart phone on YouTube.

“What’s crazy is the basics are exactly the same,” said Dull, 43, coordinator of undergraduate studies. “The underlying aesthetic, the underlying art form is exactly the same stuff. The thing that I love ... is it’s all about storytelling. It’s the oldest art form that there is; we’re just doing a modern version of it.”

Bruce Hutchinson — an associate professor and the director of the graduate digital filmmaking program — said that professional tools are becoming more and more accessible. For example, there’s the Red Camera.

“You have to get a lot of accessories, but the basic body of the camera is $30,000. It makes incredible images, equivalent to what $100,000 cameras were making a couple of years ago,” Hutchinson said. “That’s just one example, and it’s happening across the board with a lot of technologies. It’s really starting to change the landscape.”

The actual landscape of filmmaking has changed, too.

“Twenty years ago, it would all be in Los Angeles, maybe New York,” Hutchinson said. “Now movie production is all over the United States, all over the world, really. The production of Web content, commercials, industrial films is happening everywhere because the technology is inexpensive enough and people are well-trained enough they don’t have to go to LA after they graduate from school. They can stay in Arkansas, work on things in Arkansas, or use Arkansas as a home base.”

Renaud said the UCA program is producing quantifiable results. He and brother Brent helped found the Little Rock Film Festival, and every year a majority of the Arkansas submissions are from students or graduates of UCA.

“It’s a clear indication they’re learning how to create good films,” Craig Renaud said. “That’s something I’ve really seen grow. You see the quality of the Arkansas films are getting better and better.”

A STATEWIDE VISION

Christopher Crane, the state’s film commissioner, won’t single out any one program as best — in addition to UCA, he cited Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia, University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Arkansas Tech University at Russellville for producing prepared graduates. And that’s good, he said, because the opportunity to work in film is growing in the state. Last year about $15 million in feature film production happened in Arkansas, and “probably double that” in television and commercial industries, plus work done by independent production houses like JM Associates of Little Rock, which produces programs aired on ABC, ESPN, National Geographic Channel and others.

“We’re making advances, you can see it in the film festivals throughout the state, in the student submissions,” Crane said. “I feel like we’re on a good trajectory in the state. We used to have the content and export the content makers; we’re looking at keeping the content makers here now.”

There’s been some success at that. UCA alumnus Levi Agee works as a video editor and animator for the Stone Ward agency in Little Rock and also serves as a programmer for the Little Rock Film Festival and writer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Oxford American magazine. He said the things he learned at UCA proved useful immediately upon hitting the work force, starting with editing.

“I learned to use Final Cut Pro — that was huge,” he said of Apple’s proprietary digital editing software. “Once I learned that kind of high-end software, learned every single keyboard shortcut, anything that would come up in an editing problem, I’d know how to do it. I would have no issues in a real-world environment.”

The other big benefit was the UCA networking opportunities, which included a year in the master of fine arts program.

“Just team building and working with other people, socially as well as professionally,” Agee said. “How to be your own boss, but also work on a team.”

Jonathan Childs, a graduate of the master’s program, works for the secretary of state’s office as a video specialist and is editor of Oxford American’s SoLost video series. He, too, says his studies made him eminently employable.

“They don’t really focus you on one aspect of filmmaking,” he said. “You’re not learning to be a cinematographer or audio specialist; you get a well-rounded education so you can kind of figure out what you want to do and adapt to what’s going on.”

Even after graduation, Childs said, he has been able to call upon his professors for guidance.

“I feel like you can count on that, wherever you go.”

SPACE, MARIAH AND SLY

Some grads still go out of state. Steve Nolan, a Hot Springs native, is living in Brooklyn and working for View the Space, a production company in Manhattan that specializes in virtual real estate tours. He also freelances with a friend, making music videos for local bands.

“It’s really handy to have the UCA program behind you because they basically taught us how to go through the whole process, beginning to end, as an independent filmmaker, where you can’t pay people to do things for you so you have to do everything,” Nolan said.

The fact he knew how to compress video and do color correction, for example, was helpful in finding freelance work. And if you’re working the camera on a shoot and overhear someone talking about a problem they’re having with the audio from another film, well ....

“I could say that I can clean that audio up for you better than you can; maybe not as well as a full-on sound studio, but good enough for your needs and for a lot less,” Nolan said.

Louisiana, with its maturing film industry (supported by state incentives, Crane noted), is still a destination for a lot of wannabe filmmakers.

Kyla McFalls, a Magnolia native who graduated from UCA in 2011, is living in Baton Rouge and has worked on feature films, direct-to-DVD movies and television shows. Her latest gig was as an art department production assistant for The Tomb, an Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone project set for release later this year. Being a production assistant is hardly a glamorous job, she acknowledges, but that’s not the point.

“You have to start at the bottom of the totem pole,” McFalls said. “I’ve been an onset PA for a couple of movies, and an art department PA on a couple of movies and a TV show.”

Working on The Tomb was the best learning experience so far, she said, even though it meant working 12-hour days and sleeping on people’s couches for the five months it was shot in New Orleans. She also worked on American Idol when it was in Baton Rouge holding tryouts.

“I did a lot of communicating with assistant directors,” she said. “They needed to know if talent had come into the set, how much longer it would take with hair and makeup, and I did a lot of running if the camera department needed something. Or if Mariah Carey wanted her Snapple — she drinks Diet Snapple — I would run into town and get it for her.”

And, said McFalls, through it all she relied on things she learned in the UCA digital film program.

“Oh, my God! I talk about UCA all the time when I’m down there,” she said. “They’ve helped a lot. They’re my Conway family and gave me the push when I graduated. They said, ‘You can do it, we believe in you!’ I’m not sure I could’ve moved six or seven hours away from home and pursue a dream I knew nothing about without that.”