Student Academy Awards

Student Academy Award Winners Visit The Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library

The Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library is an insanely cool place. It’s the world’s preeminent cinema research facility and holds more than 80,000 screenplays, 42,000 original movie posters, 10 million photographs  and 1,100 special collections (and some awesome people working there who can’t wait to show you them). 

Everyone was welcomed into the Margaret Harrick Library, where special displays were arranged:

Arranged in chronological order over several tables were artifacts from some of the greatest films: scripts, original notes, letters, posters, costume sketches, and stills.

Carlos Grangel drew sketches for The Corpse Bride on the back of a Macy’s box because that’s his favorite color:

Student Academy Award Winners Holding Oscar

Over lunch today, the SAA winners were given a real Oscar statue to pass around and pose with.  Due to superstition, some refused to touch it, but here’s some photos of the brave ones who did:

SAA SNAPSHOTS: At the Airport

Academy staff members Lori and Debbie picking up Student Academy Award winners from the airport:

Heather Burky and Ellen Tripler, documentary winners, waiting for their baggage… and their Academy Awards.

To see more photos from this week’s action, check out other SAA Snapshots.

SAA SNAPSHOTS: Before/After Winning

Ryan Prows and wife Megan Southwell show us their “long hours of production” faces:

Ryan and Megan show us their “Ryan just won a Student Academy Award” faces:

To see more photos from this week’s action, check out other SAA Snapshots.

What Student Academy Award Winners Wish Successful Filmmakers Would Do

Since we already asked this year’s Student Academy Award Winners to share their advice for aspiring filmmakers, we thought it would be fun to turn it around and also ask them what they wish established filmmakers would do. Here’s some of what they had to say…

Amanda Tasse: “Since you have money, why not be experimental?  Try different things.  Go into TV or video games.”

David Winstone: “I notice a lot of the great filmmakers are currently turning to the past.  I’d like to see more tap into the pulse of the present.”

Mark Raso: “Stop being so prolific.  Save some films for the rest of us.”

Keiko Wright: “When you have interns, pay us.  Give all of us jobs.”

Heather Burky: “List PAs first in the credits.”

Justin Tipping: “Let Justin Tipping shadow you.  It will be groundbreaking.”

Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers From Student Academy Award Winners

Some of this year’s Student Academy Award winners were nice enough to pass on a little advice to aspiring filmmakers. Here’s what they had to say…

Heather Burky: “Find the story first and make sure it’s a good one.  Nothing else matters if your story sucks.”

Mark Raso: “Call yourself a filmmaker and make films.  Work hard to hone the craft, practice as much as you can, and don’t put limits on yourself or your ideas.”

Justin Tipping: “Make films that excite the audience, let them love something or hate it, but the worst is having them feel apathetic towards your work.  Be careful not to focus too much on gimmicks or formalistic trends, focus on truth and emotion—-those are timeless.  Always trust your instincts, but be open to ideas.”

David Winstone: “Try and not beat yourself up too much if your first attempts haven’t turned out the way you had hoped but at the same time, really analyze what the problems were and how you would do it differently… it’s a difficult balance to get right.”

Ellen Tripler: “I think you have to be curious and see yourself as a learner if you want to be a good filmmaker.  Follow your head and ground it in the craft of filmmaking.”

Thomas Stuber: “Most valuable lessons are team play and patience.  See what others are doing, but concentrate on your inspiration only.”

Amanda Tasse: “Find the part of the process you enjoy the most and highlight that and let that drive the films (whether cinematography, writing, art direction, etc.).  My advice is to not just create and look at films, but to expand the cinematic format to encompass more.”

David Wolter: “Specifically to animators: Animation and cartooning are storytelling mediums and not genres, so don’t limit your influences to that world alone.  Life and the world around us are far richer a feast than we often realize.”

Eric Prah: “Learn from whoever and wherever you can.  I find it’s nice to have a little library of clips from films, commercials, or pieces of animation that inspire you.  Also, don’t be afraid to ask for comments or critiques from the people around you—-it can be really helpful to have a second opinion.”

And Ryan Prows sums it up nicely: “Hang in there, baby.”

And check out what the SAA winners wish successful filmmakers would do.

Meet Justin Tipping

Justin Tipping - American Film Institute - Narrative Winner

Backstory

From El Cerrito, California, Justin Tipping has always been a creative guy.  Movies were always a big family pasttime and his family went to see everything.  Justin started on his directing path by recreating GI Joe and X-Men battles with his action figures.  In middle school, Justin and his friends would record hip-hop music in makeshift home studios.  Eventually, the marriage between image and music would help him fall in love with film.  At the end of high school, Justin got a DV video camera and immediately started creating videos with friends.  Some projects included his cats starring in a parody of MTV’s Real World and a murder mystery starring his younger cousins.

When starting his undergrad at UCSB, Justin’s major was Business Economics.  But after a semester abroad in Rome, he fell in love with Italian cinema and the rest was history.  He switched majors to Film and Media Studies and got an internship as an assistant editor for a social documentary.  Justin started doing everything he could to learn about film— watch movies, make videos, take improv and acting classes, PA, AC, etc.  He started directing music videos but it was his short film created in a 48-hour film contest that helped him get into AFI.

American Film Institute

Justin is very grateful he got to attend AFI.  He says, like anything else, film school is what you make of it [another SAA winner this year from AFI said the exact same phrase.  Conspiracy?].  Justin got the opportunity to focus solely on directing for two years and to meet like-minded people with the same ambition and fervor as him.  He got to make mistakes and observe others make mistakes.  The most valuable lesson he learned is that nothing beautiful is ever perfect.  And it’s better to be finished than to be perfect.  It’s important to strive for perfection but more important to always try to finish beautiful films.

For Justin, film school was crucial.  It helped him become the filmmaker he is today.  It helped him hone his abilities to run a set, work with actors, understand story, and handle tone.  He also met long term collaborators and friends.

“Nani”

“Nani” is the story of a young man an an old woman bonding through graffiti.  Justin wanted to address the universal human desire to create something lasting in the world.  The idea began with an image of Justin’s grandmother holding a spray can.  Justin never got the chance to know his grandmother well due to her struggle with dementia.  This led to an important theme in “Nani”— the parallel between memory loss and graffiti (a unique art form that is here one day and white-washed over the next).

It took more than a year to go from script to production— including going through AFI’s thesis green-lighting process.  After going through numerous drafts, the themes of the story stayed the same.  In the process of finding locations for shooting, Justin was able to simplify his story to the bare essentials— two people bonding.

What’s Next?

Justin wrote his first feature film with the same writer he wrote “Nani” with and they are currently in the process of getting it made.  And Justin’s going to Disneyland, of course.

Check out more from Justin at his website.

And check out a clip from “Nani.”