Between shooting the footage of stunt actors set on fire, and the start of the Spring semester, Cinematography student Joe Petkwitz (’14) found himself in the exciting role of director of photography for one of the two Interterm Stunt and Effects class short films, “Truth.”  The films are in the post production process now, but they’ll hopefully be finished and ready for public consumption soon!  While he’s usually found behind the camera, the nature of the class required him to be a very active cinematographer – moving all over a set, or a location, to grab the perfect shot.  Since the films are exercises, we’ll have permission to post them here on the blog – so stay tuned to see the results of his hard work soon!

Guest Blogger: Joe Petkwitz (’14), MFA Cinematography

As the Director of Photography of one of the projects, I was astonished at how much was possible to accomplish in such limited time!

The Location Filming (Stunts and Effects) was by far the highlight of my young career here at Chapman.

The hands on experience gained in Set Management, along with the ability to learn from and talk to a hand full industry professionals:  Stunt Coordinators: Buddy Joe Hooker & Ed Stacey, Director Renny Harlin [see some of his awesome first-person film student stories here -JP], 1st Ass’t Director Linda Montanti, and Cinematographer Steven Bernstein [see a review of his talk here] made this class something that puts our school ahead of any other around!

Where else do the students create a film with both preproduction guidance from professionals and receive “on-set” feedback from these mentors as well? The success of this class is a testament to the “class” of the instructors, and their desire for us to learn!

I learned more about the reality of the filmmaking profession in 2.5 weeks of class than I did in all of my first semester classes combined and made connections that I know will prove beneficial through the rest of my career.

 

[Interested to see more of his work before the film is fully finished?  Head on over to his website to see photo stills, and his soon-to-be-updated clip reel.  -JP]