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My lifelong drive to entertain an audience is why I chose to become a filmmaker. In order to succeed in this challenge, I believe I should always approach the education and art of creating narrative and documentary movies as an opportunity for me as well as my students, cast, crew, and audience to explore both a diversity of thought and the diversity of the human condition.  With each film, I strive to bring a complex story to the screen fueled by characters that represent many walks of life, focusing on how their race, gender, ethnicity, and/or orientation contribute to the goals they undertake and the conflicts they face.  I believe such a focus on character development guiding plot structure will enhance an audience’s participation with a film, while also giving students and me the opportunity to improve upon our own individual forms of self-expression, social awareness, education, and entertainment.

 

For example, the screenplay for my short film, Midnight Lyric, incorporates actual ghost stories from the real Lyric Theater in Blacksburg, Virginia.  However, while one goal of this film is to give a fictional explanation to the strange occurrences that took place in the theater before its renovation/restoration in the late 1990s, I also wanted the movie to reflect additional research I conducted on the history and culture of old segregated theaters in the South.  This not only brings to light local folklore of a “haunted building” that can appeal to a small Blacksburg audience, but it also educates a broader audience about larger issues concerning social injustices, human rights, and the racial divide practiced in Southern theaters until the late 1960s and early 1970s (https://youtu.be/AyhwlKUxc_g?t=1m17s).  I feel incorporating this research into a fictional plot of my own creation helped me accomplish these larger goals, despite the setting of Midnight Lyric taking place during present day.  It was also a rewarding experience for the lead actor in this film, who is black and was a fellow graduate student at the time of production.

 

I believe one of the challenges facing independent filmmakers today is how to emotionally engage audiences with compelling characters and thought-provoking content when these viewers are typically drawn more to current blockbuster models.  A good film must not only entertain but also leave moviegoers to ponder its meaning long after they exit the theatre.  One way my films attempt to accomplish this is by transcending genres – placing familiar narrative and stylistic conventions (often exaggerated in blockbusters) on the periphery in order to frame more relatable real-life experiences that may fall outside these limits (Gaines, 2012), such as exposing constraints on class, gender, and sexuality (Ross & Stein, 2008; Stein, 2005).  Midnight Lyric accomplishes this in several ways.  First, I casted talented actors who did not resemble traditional Hollywood-glamorous body types because I believed it made the lead characters, Miles and Christina, more relatable and convincing. Second, while the identity of the ghost haunting the theatre is confirmed at the end of the movie, another haunting is revealed that raises many unanswered questions about the true cause of the villain’s death in 1929, Christina’s underlying reasons for pursuing a relationship with Miles, and whether the indifference Miles experiences from the theater’s workers are due to his race or because they don’t want him to become another victim of the bigotry haunting their theater.

 

Another example of engaging diversity in both my creative work and teaching exists in a short film Lincoln Purvis, one of my advanced filmmaking students at William Woods University, wrote as an assignment for my Screenwriting & Directing class.  Jump Start is a story about a couple whose relationship is cut short by the actions of a drunk driver.  In making this film, Lincoln and I collaborated with the theatre program’s Acting for the Camera class, where we were challenged to cast ten acting students in five principal roles.  Our solution: Lincoln shot one version of the film that depicted the couple in the script as straight while I directed an alternate version where the two main characters existed as a lesbian couple (https://youtu.be/AyhwlKUxc_g?t=18s).  The project helped everyone in both classes realize how human problems like drunk driving, alcoholism, and the loss of a loved one know no boundaries when it comes to sexual orientation.

 

Both Jump Start and Midnight Lyric transcend their mixed genres by interweaving common conventions with non-formulaic plot elements and character development.  Sue Taylor Parker (Anderson, 1998) describes this interweaving between the familiar and the unexpected as the “Reticulate Arousal System,” which keeps audiences engaged with both films.

 

Finally, whenever possible, I like to write and direct films with strong female leads.  My latest feature-length project, Relics of the Madre Vena, also demonstrates how this break from formulaic plots contributes to the study of diversity. While the counter-protagonist, Hawk, parodies the male adventurer stereotype, the main protagonist, Maggie, breaks from a similar type by being the more rationale educated female graduate student who tries (unsuccessfully) to play by the rules.  Maggie and her companions fail to find the Madre Vena treasure (as it doesn’t exist), and what they do find forces her to make amends with the main antagonist by apologizing for actions taken by her ancestors during the American Civil War.  But more importantly, Maggie’s sidekick, Simon, whom the audience is initially led to believe is just another gay stereotype, turns out to be the real hero of the film when he becomes the voice of reason at a pivotal moment, saving everyone, which breaks the cinematic mold we often see representing homosexuality (https://youtu.be/Z6iJFkiXx20).  The visual story for this project greatly benefitted from the contributions of a diverse cast and crew made up of professional actors and students who collaborated with me during the Summer 2015 production of the movie (https://youtu.be/J9u6Rsz9660).

 

It is my hope that my roles as both an educator and artist will further contribute these values to the diversity of any learning-centered community, which would include my colleagues, superiors, subordinates, and students in an atmosphere of mutual discourse and collaboration.  If you require any other examples of how I integrate diversity into my teaching and scholarship, please feel free to watch the various videos showcased under both the Teaching and Demo Reels sections of this website.

 

 

References

Anderson, J. (1998).  The Reality of Illusion.  Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

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Gaines, J. M. (2012). The Genius of Genre and the Ingenuity of Women. In C. Gledhill (Ed.), Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinemas (pp. 15-28). Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

 

Ross, S. M., & Stein, L. E. (Eds.). (2008). Teen Television: Essays on Programming and Fandom. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.

 

Stein, L. E., & McCarthy, A. (2006). 'A transcending-genre kind of thing': Teen/fantasy TV and online audience culture (Doctoral dissertation, New York University, 2006). New York, NY: Dissertation Abstracts International.