Film and Digital Media @ Messiah

Here are some of the student films I would like to share with the broader public from the many films made by our students over the past three years:
Communications @ Messiah by Daniel Jamara and Melissa Lutz
The Face by James Rohner
Love Lost by Ken Abbott
The Door by Joel Dawson […]

There’s a new link in my blog roll:
Jim Rohner’s Film and Media Blog
Jim is an alumnus of Messiah’s Film and Digital Media Concentration and I’m happy to recommend his blog to readers. I can’t always agree with what he says (his list of great horror films leaves off every film before the late 1950s! […]

I don’t generally read the Huffington Post blog site, and even more rarely recommend it, but there’s a very good OP-ED peice on who benefits from the WGA strike, and it’s not only the writers! Susan Savage, SAG member, writes in response to a friend’s gripe against the strike:
“Very few (below the line) people […]

This year we’ve been able to do a small production of a film in my COM 224 Preproduction class, Homecoming. Here’s a still from a break in shooting on location:

From Left: Amanda Chopas, Justin Johnson and Brian Smith

It’s a story of one family’s loss of their only son, Ryan, in the Iraq War. The […]

The film Bella won the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award in 2007. It was shown in the Harrisburg area at a private showing on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 in the Cardinal Keeler Center.
An excellent dramatic and theological discussion of the film can be found here:
A Decidedly Unsappy Bella

I recommend seeing it when […]

According to WGAw, 4,434 of its working film and television members earned a combined $905.8 million in 2006. The average member earned $204,295 and over half earned at least $104,750. The WGA noted that these numbers are based on earnings reported for dues purposes and thus do not fully reflect above-scale payments. According to studies, […]

Early today, the WGA completely withdrew its DVD proposal, which the Companies said was a stumbling block. Yet, the Companies still insisted on the following:
• No jurisdiction for most of new media writing.
• No economic proposal for the part of new media writing where they do propose to give coverage.
• Internet downloads at the DVD rate.
• No residual for […]

The Honors Program sponsored a small screening of Wild Strawberries (1957) for Honors’ students only on Monday, November 5th, 2007. Viewing it for the first time since 1990 caused me to reflect on the fickleness of critical opinion concerning the oeuvre of any filmmaker.

Bergman’s work has gone through a roller-coaster ride since the late […]

Well, the Writers Guilds of both West and East coasts voted to strike today. The strike actually begins Monday, Nov. 5, at 12:01 AM. According to the BBC,

Writers are demanding an increase in the fees they receive when their work is reproduced on DVDs, the internet, mobile phones and other electronic devices.
Producers reject […]

Michelangelo Antonioni made incredibly provocative films, rich in a unique visual style and with a searing political point of view. Recently I watched L’Avventura for the fifth time and enjoyed its powerful direction and human depth more than ever before. Why does it continue to create such an impression even after repeated viewings? […]