Paige Murphy is a student in the University of Central Arkansas’ digital film making program in Conway.
She seems like a pretty typical student - she grew up in Little Rock with an older brother and “various pets.” Her father is a dentist and her mother worked at Acxiom for nearly 10 years. Her brother plans to attend law school in the fall. For the past five years, she has been a volunteer with the Little Rock Film Festival.
She first met the founders Brent and Craig Renaud when she was a freshman at Little Rock Central High School, where the brothers were filming their documentary Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later.
Murphy describes her experience volunteering for the festival over the years as “incredible.”
“I’ve gotten to meet local people who love film as much as I do, and more importantly I’ve gotten to meet some really cool filmmakers, ” she says. “Not to mention, I get to see the best films.” Murphy says that at times she feels overwhelmed by the festival but says it’s always worth the hard work. She is now considered “staff,” instead of a seasonal volunteer, and plans to work for the festival as long as she can.
I follow her on Twitter, as I try to do with most Arkansas filmmakers, and last summer I kept seeing her Tweets about Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut Don Jon (which at the time was called Don Jon’s Addiction). Getting the film - which stars Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore and Gordon-Levitt - for the festival was a long shot, so I was cryptic when Murphy asked about its chances, but just a few hours before we sent this year’s program off to the printer the stars somehow aligned and we secured it as the festival’s closing night film. Murphy was thrilled.
“I’ve always been impressed with Gordon-Levitt’s acting and I figured he had to be a decent writer as well,” she says. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it. I thought it was clever, hilarious and an impressive directorial debut.”
That’s not the best part. After the screening she sent a Tweet to Gordon-Levitt and he replied, referring to her Twitter account image, which shows her holding a camera. “Thanks! Nice avatar, guessing you’re a filmmaker.” The conversation went on for a couple more Tweets to where he suggested she check out his collaborative project website HitRECord (hitrecord.org).
Murphy was already aware of the website - she’d been on it for six years. It allows you to openly collaborate with artists, musicians, writers and performers by posting work on a forum where people can add or subtract or remix anyway they see fit. If you contribute to a project that makes money the profits are distributed to everyone involved. Murphy has her own project on the site she calls “Around the World” where she has been asking for collaborators to submit images, video, audio and animations from their travels. She says in the first week she received more than 300 contributions from which she hopes to make a documentary by the end of summer.
Murphy plans to graduate next May and move to Austin, Texas; New Orleans; or Atlanta to work on film sets. She does, however, want to work on films in Arkansas - films like Little Rock native Jeff Nichols’ Mud. Murphy is quick to note that she grew up going to Trinity United Methodist Church, Nichols’ home church.
Levi Agee is a filmmaker and a programmer for the Little Rock Film Festival. Write him at levifi [email protected].
MovieStyle, Pages 39 on 05/31/2013