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Frank Provenzano: Hi! I am Frank Provenzano with University of Michigan News Service.
We are in Traverse City for the Seventh Annual Traverse City Film Festival, and we are here
at Northwestern College where the Film School is located.
Several University of Michigan faculty members from the Screen Arts Department participate
in panels and teach classes here at the Film School.
Robert Rayher: As an educator this gives me an opportunity to reach out to a wider audience
who wouldn’t typically be in my class, people who have an interest in the things that I
do everyday in the classroom, but don’t have access.
This particular class, which is called Acting for the Camera, came about because in my class
at U-M I bring in a visitor, with the help of Jim Burnstein, who I teach the class with,
we bring in Pamela Rack-Guest, who is a Acting Coach and Casting Director in Hollywood. So
she and I thought it would be a lot of fun to have a similar kind of class here, but
for whoever wants to come.
Pamela Rack-Guest: I also gave a course a couple of days ago in casting and how to break
into show business. So that was really fun, because they asked me all kinds of questions
about what should they do, and I know, so I told them. It was really wonderful to see
the look on everybody’s faces, because my personal point of view is that if you have
a dream, it’s there for a reason, and you should follow it. And here I was able to give
them practical information about how to do it.
Deb Lake: We expanded our Film School this year; in the past we have done two Film School
sessions, Wednesday through Saturday, this year we added Sunday; and we also have screenwriting
with V. Prasad, which is amazing, and one of our most popular sessions, because everyone
wants to be a screenwriter.
But what we love about the Film School is that it’s for people of all ages. So you
have students in high school, students in middle school, who want to be filmmakers one
day and who are inspired by what they see at the Film School. And then you have people
who are in college who may already be in Film School who find this an incredible value and
are getting to access the filmmakers and the professors who are coming here. And then in
addition, you have adults who, Michael Moore was almost 40-years-old when he made his first
film.
Lisa Pick: We think it is important to support University of Michigan in its film efforts
as well as others. I am an example of a graduate of the University of Michigan who got a film
degree, and I think our public universities need that kind of assistance from companies
and from private individuals.
Robert Rayher: Part of what happens here at the Traverse City Film Festival, its Film
School, is it’s an opportunity for those of us who teach in Michigan to further the
basic premise of what Michigan is about as a larger educational institution. It’s not
a gated community, but rather what Michigan is about is for us to be able to engage with
the broader community and fulfill really what is the ultimate goal of University of Michigan
as a public education institution, let them find out about us, and us find out about them,
and create a more dynamic and ongoing interaction.