REEL LIVES

BY MAERI FERGUSON AND GREG HERBOWY

Pick any profession within the film and television worlds—and there seem to be an ever-growing number of them—and odds are you can find an SVA alumnus to claim it. These graduates have a range of backgrounds, too: Many may have completed one of the College’s film programs, but others might have come from cartooning or fine arts or photography.

What draws such diverse creative talents to the entertainment business? What do people in these di erent careers actually do? How have they carved a place in a notoriously competitive and unpredictable industry? We talked with seven alumni in various professions and at various stages of their careers to get a sense of the ingenuity, compromises and daily labors that go into creating movies and series in the 21st century.

1. Director, writer and SVA alumnus Maya Cozier at work on the set of her debut feature, She Paradise (2020). The film was acquired earlier this year by Samuel Goldwyn Pictures. Image courtesy Maya Cozier.

2. Producer and SVA alumnus Jeremy Dawson (right) on the set of the film The French Dispatch (2021) with cinematographer Bob Yeoman. Photo by Roger Do Minh. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All rights reserved.

3. Cinematographer and SVA alumnus Michael Simmonds at work on the set of the series The Righteous Gemstones (HBO, 2019 – ). Photo by Ryan Green. 4. From left: actor Natalie Portman, director Darren Aronofsky, Woodstock Film Festival co-founder and SVA alumnus Meira Blaustein and actor Jennifer Connelly at the 2014 festival. Photo by Simon Russell.

5. Still from the series Space Force (Netflix, 2020 – ), featuring VFX work by compositor and SVA alumnus Aditi Khosla. Image courtesy Aditi Khosla/ Zoic Studios.

6. The set of the series The Morning Show (Apple TV+, 2019 – ), one of several television shows and films whose look has been realized by production designer and SVA alumnus John Paino. Image courtesy John Paino. 7. Still from the series Jane the Virgin, (CW, 2014 – 2019), featuring VFX work by compositor Aditi Khosla. Image courtesy Aditi Khosla/Muse VFX.

8. Storyboard artist and SVA alumnus Warren Drummond (right) on the set of Fences (2016) with director and actor Denzel Washington and production designer David Gropman. Photo by Fences cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, courtesy Warren Drummond.

1. Producer Jeremy Dawson (left) on the set of The French Dispatch (2021) with co-producer John Peet. Photo by Roger Do Minh. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All rights reserved.

2. Still from The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), featuring effects work by compositor Aditi Khosla. Image courtesy Aditi Khosla/Secret Lab.

(MFA 1993 Photography and Related Media) is best known for his collaborations with writer–director Wes Anderson. Dawson produced Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch, which had its U.S. premiere in October. No one says, “I want to be a film producer” when they’re a kid—it’s not something you can quantify. But I always wanted to collaborate with people on things. I’m a workaholic, but I always say I’m also really lazy. What gets me excited and motivated is working on something with other people.

What I do as a producer is, somebody comes to me with a project, and I start figuring out the how, why, what, where . . . and each one of those things brings up other questions that need to be answered. It’s a Rubik’s cube, and you never run out of things to figure out. Some of it is creative and some of it is practical. I’m working in Spain now, and I was just trying to figure out how to get someone in the country who’s having trouble getting in. The next moment I could be helping a crew member. This morning I was rearranging a gymnasium that we’ll be using as a location. I started out in film creating titles, visual e ects and special sequences. I was teaching Photoshop at SVA and taking a continuing-education animation course at the school. I needed a project for class, and [director] Darren Aronofsky, who I’d gone to undergraduate with, was making Pi [1998], his first film. I was helping him out on it and said, “Maybe I could do the title sequence.” I animated it in the SVA building on 23rd Street. From there other film people started hiring me to do things, and I was getting known as a “maker.” I ended up helping Wes with stop-motion sequences on The Life Aquatic [with Steve Zissou (2004)], though I didn’t know how to do stop- motion at the time, and after that he asked me to join Fantastic Mr. Fox [2009] and help with post-production on The Darjeeling Limited [2007]. All of a sudden I was a producer, with no idea of how to be one. The nice thing about working with Wes is that he likes to be fearless. A lot of times in art school or in the industry, you’ll see people imitating their predecessors, or “playing adult.” My feeling is, if you really want to be great, don’t emulate anyone—just break the rules and go a little crazy with it.

The French Dispatch was an unusual project in that it’s an anthology of several stories, so every week and a half we’d be shooting a new story. So many sets were being built and knocked down. It felt like the road was being built as we were driving down it—the builders were a half-mile ahead and we were gaining on them. But Wes has strategies that we tend to use to keep locations physically close together and we do a lot of preparation, which includes putting together an animated storyboard of the whole movie for all the departments to have. We shot pretty much everything in the same town in France, Angoulême. I was there for four or five months; we go in advance to visit locations, figure out where we’re going to stay and hire a local line producer, who’ll introduce you to local crews. A great thing about French film crews is a lot of them are real film fans. Wes is one of a small group of directors who still shoots on actual film, and for the black-and-white sequences we shot on black-and-white film stock, which is hard to come by and you have to order in advance. We ran out at one point and had to scramble while we waited for more. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about what I’d be doing in five years. I’m not one of those people. I like movies. Once I was first on a set, I thought, “This is fun.” I was just happy that someone needed me to figure something out and I was going to do it.

(BFA 1984 Media Arts) is a storyboard artist who has contributed to more than 120 films and series, including King Richard (2021), Halloween Kills (2021), Coming 2 America (2020) and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013 – 2018). In 2016, he was voted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Storyboards are a visual reference for the filmmakers—they show how a scene should play out. You tend to use them more for scenes with complicated camerawork, stunts or e ects. For a big action scene, you wouldn’t draw every punch, but you want to have all the main beats of the scene. The stunt coordinator can use that to estimate how much time it’s going to take to film it, and productions can count how many shots will need certain e ects.

Another reason to storyboard is, you often shoot out of order. You’ll try to shoot everything you need to at the location you’re at, or everything you need from a certain viewpoint, before moving on. My job is to storyboard the sequence as if it’s cut together as a movie. That

way the filmmakers get to see how the shots will play together and what they might need to add in or take out.

I’ve done a lot of action and comedy. I’ve done dramas—A Beautiful Mind [2001], Fences [2016]. I’ve gotten calls for war or period films, but I don’t get hired, because they’re so specific about hiring someone who’s done that. As a Black storyboard artist, sometimes they want to set up Black directors with collaborators who they won’t have to explain things to, who might have a certain shared cultural understanding.

Sometimes you don’t connect with a director and you find another place of employment. Other times the director is magical to be around. I worked for 20 years with John Singleton; our meetings would just be me and him. Someone like [director–producer] Shawn Levy has fun with pitches, which is where you present your ideas. Ron Howard lets you do whatever you want, then gives you feedback. For Fences, I was on location in Pittsburgh and would meet with [director and star] Denzel Washington on Sunday mornings. He’d take me through how he envisioned the scenes for that week, and I’d go back to the o ce and make them. Imagine sitting with Denzel Washington, who’s acting out the script in character, just you and him? It was mind blowing.

I haven’t experienced racism as a storyboard artist, but I have done movies where I’ve been the only Black person. I’ve been Jackie Robinson. But if they get Will Smith to star, or a Black director, then you’ll see Black department heads. John Singleton’s crews were very mixed. Though I’ve never worked directly with him, Spike Lee’s crews are very mixed as well. This business is very much about who you know. So sometimes, to move things along, you have to make a statement and say, “This is how we come to the 21st century, and we’ve got to hire certain people.”

(BFA 2000 Film and Video) has been the director of photography on more than 40 films and television shows, including The Righteous Gemstones (2019 – ), Halloween (2018), The Last O.G. (2018 – ) and Halloween Kills (2021).

A cinematographer is like a photographer, but for movies. They’re responsible for the framing and lighting of every shot of every scene. Your average feature-film shoot day never really starts or ends but is a continuation of the previous day, with a few night terrors linking the two. I usually show up on set 45 minutes before my call time—30 minutes early is industry standard. If you showed up “at call,” people would think poorly of you. Each day starts with a breakfast burrito and co ee. Burritos are key: They don’t require utensils or even a seat. Breakfast on a set is pretty awesome, but the cinematographer rarely spends time at the bu et or food truck. Productions go above and beyond to bring things to me to ensure my focus stays on the photography and schedule. Even my bathroom visits are mentioned on the P.A.’s radio. Every morning, the first assistant director [A.D.] and I debate the shooting order for the day. But the biggest creative decision I’ll make is where to park the production trucks. You never want to move the trucks. The first shot of the day gets an absurd amount of attention. Paintings on the walls or cars on the street get slightly moved, and people point out things like “plants growing out of people’s heads,” because a leaf in the background briefly lines up with an actor’s head during a wide shot. There is no fighting this phenomenon aside from an experienced director, and even they tend to obsess. It’s best to let everyone get this out of their system; in a few hours, nobody will give a shit about any of it.

At lunch, the director, A.D. and I discuss a strategy for the afternoon work and whatever’s left over from the morning. Usually it’s “Mike needs to work faster” and “Let’s use our two cameras to shoot di erent scenes at the same time.” It’s the A.D. and the director against me, so I say, “Great idea,” and go tell my crew—the lighting, grip and camera team, which can be up to 50 people—that we’ll be splitting up. They never like this. What’s worse is that when they execute this plan e ectively, it means it’ll be asked of them again, and they know it. You often double the amount of setups in the afternoon. As long as the performance and focus are good, you move on—no more fidgeting with “trees growing out of an actor’s head.” I believe that shot selection and acting are what’s critical to a scene being good and everything else is nonessential, and the after-lunch work is a testament to that.

By the end of the day my job is managerial: I jump between two cameras, which are pointing in completely di erent directions. When the day is over, I go back to my Airbnb and have a few beers as I skim through the dailies. I’ve been shooting movies for close to 20 years and I will forever be shocked that none of the on-set dramas are present in the images. The audience cannot see that sliver of a flag I couldn’t get out of the edge of the frame, or that the sun is rising behind the camera during a night scene. A scene that took six hours to shoot is no better than one that took 90 minutes.

(BFA 2016 Film) is the director and co-writer of She Paradise (2020), which premiered at the virtual AFI Fest last year and screened at the Tribeca Film Festival this past June.

I co-wrote She Paradise in 2017 with a screenwriting student from NYU. It’s a coming-of-age story set in Trinidad, which is where I grew up. We wrote it as a feature but decided to make a short of it, to have something we could use as a pitch for the project. We submitted it to Short of the Week and they accepted it.

Soon after I won a small grant from the Trinidad government to shoot the full feature. The D.P., Jackson Warner Lewis, and the sound mixer, Brian Perry, also went to SVA [both BFA 2015 Film and Video]. Later, the short screened at BAM’s 2019 Carribean Film Series. An executive producer came up to me after, and I told her I’d already shot the full feature. I sent her the raw footage, the script and a rough timeline for post production, and in the space of a week, she was able to call some people, get an investor and I was able to fund post-production for the film.

We submitted the feature to festivals in late 2019 and decided to premiere at Tribeca, because of the huge Caribbean diaspora in New York. It was really exciting—we had the screening scheduled and an after-party planned—but because of COVID, none of it happened. When it finally showed at Tribeca this year, it was surreal to see it on the big screen after so long. But it was bittersweet. Because of the pandemic, I couldn’t have the cast and crew with me. I’m planning on organizing a proper first screening out in Trinidad.

I’m working on a lot right now. In June, Samuel Goldwyn Films acquired the U.S. rights to She Paradise. I was approached about a project set in Newburgh, New York, and we plan on beginning production next August. I’m co-developing a limited series about [songwriter and musician] Calypso Rose, with a company out in L.A., with the co-writer of She Paradise. I shoot

commercials, mostly in Trinidad. I shot a music video for Atlantic Records. I’m also working on my MFA at Columbia.

I think my heart really is with the narrative. I love being on set with actors and bringing a script to life. My least favorite part of filmmaking is definitely pre-production, making miracles happen with no budget. But I do feel like SVA was a hands-on, tactical program, and that I got a strong foundation for that practical part.

(BFA 1983 Fine Arts) is the Emmy-nominated production designer of such films as The Station Agent (2003), Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and Wild (2014), and such series as Big Little Lies (2017 – 2019), The Leftovers (2014 – 2017), The Shrink Next Door (2021) and The Last of Us (2022 – ).

I went to SVA to become an artist and I got into production design because I’d gotten sick of the art world—it felt very cloistered. One day I wandered into a theater, and I started painting and designing sets for them. And I liked that. That led to low-budget music videos and commercials, and low-budget films, and it just built up from there.

As a production designer, I’m responsible for the look of everything except the costumes—every fork, every piece of décor, everything that’s in front of the camera. How I get work is, someone contacts my agent and I’ll read the script. If it interests me, I’ll meet with the director or producer. If we like each other, they’ll o er me the job. I’ll put together a crew, start doing research, spend time sitting with the director and getting into their heads and start looking into locations. For research, I have a huge personal library, I avail myself of things online and I’ll use the New York Public Library Picture Collection, which is a great resource. Sometimes you research on location. For The Le overs we did an 1830s Millerite village in the Australian outback, so I went to a historical society in Australia to look at

1. A pre-VFX shot from Training Day (CBS, 2017), from compositor Aditi Khosla’s reel. Once completed, the character on the left appears to be hanging from the side of a skyscraper. Image courtesy Aditi Khosla. 2. Producer Jeremy Dawson (left) on the set of The French Dispatch (2021) with co-producer Octavia Peissel. Photo by Roger Do Minh. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All rights reserved. 3. Woodstock Film Festival co-founder Meira Blaustein with actor Giancarlo Esposito (left) and producer William Horburg (right) at the 2017 festival. Photo by Dione Ogust. the furniture. I love research—that’s the time when you’re dreaming and everything’s possible.

During pre-production, we’re putting together a lot of pictures and references. I’ll make extensive mood boards that visually boil down the show, to get across the atmosphere and color schemes. Those can change, but you need somewhere to start. There are designers who are drafting plans for all the sets, and these sets are big and complicated. Not only do they have to be built, which could take 10 or 12 weeks, they have to be wired for a big grid of lights overhead, and when they’re done being built, they need to be decorated.

I try to work with the same people consistently, and I oversee many departments: the set decorators, who choose every detail down to the fabric on chairs; the construction and scenic department, which builds the sets; the graphics department, which is responsible for any signs or seals or flags, things like that; and the props department.

A week or two before shooting I’ll go with the director and cinematographer and look again at locations and talk about what we’re going to do, how we’re going to film them. My team is always ahead of anyone—typically a location has to be changed and dressed, and that has to be done in advance. I’m there throughout filming. Sometimes, I’m there for the whole creative process. On The Le overs, they were coming to me while they were writing episodes and asking me to help figure out things, like what something should look like. I would be in the writers’ room. This is a collaborative medium.

The best part about being a production designer is, someone gives you the means to do incredible things in a perfect world.

(BFA 2014 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual E ects) has contributed computer-based e ects to such films as The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Drunk Bus (2020) and A Most Violent Year (2014); series such as Westworld (2016 – ), and The Walking Dead (2010 – ); and commercials and music videos for Pokémon GO, Prada, BMW and Taylor Swi .

I graduated in 2014, but I’ve been working in the field since 2012, interning at studios like Pixomondo, in Burbank, and Playware, in Singapore. After SVA, I joined the Molecule [cofounded by Luke Di Tomasso (BFA 2001

Computer Art)] as a junior compositor, and came to L.A. a few months later.

The easiest way to describe my work is how I describe it to my parents: It’s Photoshop, but for video. You can add or take away anything you want—you could put an elephant in the room, or paint one out of a room. You could composite an entirely new location using green screen, add explosions and computer-generated imagery [CGI] or make the sublest change to an actor’s appearance.

Right now, I’m a freelancer. The hours can be inconsistent, but I find it exciting—it allows me to work at di erent studios on all sorts of projects. Sometimes it’s a 9-to-5 schedule. Other times, it’s 12-hour days for months. The hours get longer as you get closer to summer. That’s when you’re working on summer releases and new shows, which can have reshoots and re-editing.

Probably the most cumbersome projects I’ve worked on have been the DC crossover events between Legends of Tomorrow [2016 – ], The Flash [2014 – ], Arrow [2012 – 2020] and Supergirl [2015 – 2021]. The timeline is super tight and these episodes are e ects-heavy. Once we have the footage, all the shots need to be tracked, which gauges the speed and direction of the camera’s movement. Then the dynamics department needs to simulate each superhero’s e ects—lightning, tornadoes, dust storms, tsunamis, ice or fire blasts. . . . If there’s CGI involved, that team needs to create the asset, add maneuverability (or rig), texture, animate, light and then render it. Then everything is brought into compositing, which is where we make it look like it belongs in the footage in terms of color, placement, interactivity in the scene, etc., and take care of certain 2D e ects—like beauty cleanup work.

The technology is always improving, but there’s still a limit to how quickly things can be done. Rendering time is something that often gets forgotten by clients, though a VFX house will budget for it. A shot might take X number of man-hours, but the rendering—the time it takes for computers to render out complete frames—can take a while, especially if there’s heavy CGI. It can be chaotic, but it’s exciting to work on projects that let you push the envelope and discover ways to streamline the process. Working crazy hours physically in an o ce is something that I miss—it’s a comfortable feeling to be around your teammates all working on the same projects. Ever since the pandemic started, we’ve been working through either VPN [virtual private network], online portal or Teradici, a remote-desktop device that connects you to a computer at the studio. Some smaller studios are considering going remote permanently, although I don’t know if anything can replace the morale-building environment of being together in a room.

(BFA 1986 Film and Video) is the executive director, programmer and founder, with Laurent Retjo (BFA 1984 Film and Video), of the Woodstock Film Festival in Woodstock, New York. This year the festival celebrated its 22nd year, running from late September through early October in various Hudson Valley locations.

The way I run the Woodstock Film Festival is, my work is my life and my life is my work. I start early in the morning and I stop late at night. I was having a drink last night with a colleague after a long day and telling her what I’d done that day: I was dealing with the design of the goodie bags and the hats, screening and programming films, editing program blurbs, interviewing potential new sta and working on a grant application. This morning I’m dealing with the marketing promotions, dealing with a company we’re partnering with, doing various interviews with filmmakers and sponsorships. You keep shifting your attention between business and creative—programming the right films, putting the panels together, figuring out what logo is going on what item and what the design of it is, shopping around for the right prices. . . . Obviously I love it, but I feel like I wear too many hats, always.

The idea for starting a festival probably began when I was at SVA. I interned at Lincoln Center, for the New York Film Festival—I also interned with Ruth Westheimer, the sex doctor—and I actually pitched a festival to [former BFA Film Chair] George McGinnis, though it never happened. After graduating, I got a job at the Hudson Valley Film Festival, which no longer exists, to program their shorts and ended up programming the festival itself. That led to a job as a programmer at another upstate film festival, and that led to me wanting to create my own.

Because I run a festival, I get invited to be on other festival juries or attend industry events in places I would have otherwise never gone, like the Faroe Islands or Bhutan. And that is wonderful. I also love getting to know filmmakers and supporting them. This year, we launched a month-long, in-person filmmakers’ residency/incubator. Every day we’d get together with the filmmakers and watch films and have conversations about everything from the state of the world to philosophy to the movies. And we’d do it over food and wine and it would be just like a heavenly summer camp for adults. We also do a youth film lab—a three-week immersive for teenagers, where we help them each make their own film. I think I really love nurturing filmmakers; it gives me joy and a sense of fulfillment.

During the year we are four full-time sta ers. It balloons in the summer and keeps on adding. Eventually it will probably be 30 or more seasonal sta . And we have about 200 volunteers and a board of directors. Right now we have 13 board members and 30 advisory board members.

As of now [August], we’re planning for an in-person festival unless things drastically change. We’re working on the design of the printed program and still sta ng. We’re also getting ready to announce the lineup, getting ready to start selling tickets—that’s going to happen at the beginning of September. And we’re finalizing contracts with venues, applying for grants and constantly raising money. Raising money never stops. ◆

Interviews and contributions have been condensed and edited.