Elle Cota, Spectrum Editor
Graduates from the Robertson School of Communication will take their documentaries beyond the classroom this Saturday, Oct. 10, at the Washington West Film Festival.
The films are part of (CAP)SULE, a capstone program designed by Robert Milazzo, an assistant professor and media production sequence coordinator, gives media production students opportunities to publicly share stories on how they see Virginia. It is conceived as a “time capsule” of the people, places and communities that hold meaning through a generational lens.
Robertson students produced, directed, shot and edited documentaries, with original scores created through collaborations with graduate composer programs at Johns Hopkins University and Berklee College of Music.
“Film Team,” a 15-minute documentary directed and produced by Anastasia Hines, follows students at Manchester High School in Chesterfield County as they create a film of their own.
After spending years creating films, Hines found herself back where her filmmaking journey began — at a high school film team.
Hines first became interested in filmmaking as a child, making YouTube videos with her brother before joining her high school’s newly created film team. Since then, she has made more than 30 films.
Hines wanted the documentary to have a reality-style, comedic approach and spent a couple of months filming the students from a fly-on-the-wall perspective.
“I kind of thought about, you know, maybe it could be part of an homage to myself as well and back to my film roots,” Hines said.
The documentary follows Valentino, one of the high school students, as they create their own film, with some making a film for the first time.
“It was really exciting to just follow along their journey as young filmmakers,” Hines said.
Hines said she wanted audiences to see the work and commitment required to create a film.
“I really hope audiences when they watch the film that, of course, they’re having a good time and they’re enjoying it, but also that they can focus on the reality of what it takes to create a film,” Hines said.
The rest of her crew could not regularly travel to Manchester High School, meaning Hines handled most of the filming herself. The students also disappeared for about three weeks during production, creating an unexpected conflict that eventually became part of the documentary’s climax.
“After Class,” created by Nellie Suleymanian, Ceanne Rennie and Sofia Feliciano, takes a different approach to documenting young people and their experiences.
Suleymanian co-directed and co-wrote the 15-minute documentary. The film explores the similarities between people who share the same spaces but may know little about one another outside of them.
The project began as an idea about “third spaces” and human connection before the filmmakers centered the documentary around a VCU drawing class for non-majors. To capture the participants’ experiences outside of class, the filmmakers gave four subjects inexpensive voice recorders and asked them to create audio diaries for four days.
Suleymanian listened to more than eight hours of recordings to determine which moments could form a cohesive story. The filmmakers had only 3 ½ weeks to film.
“You really have to learn to let go of a lot of things that you might like to for the sake of what is a consistent storyline here,” Suleymanian said.
The documentary focuses on the idea that people may have more in common with those around them than they realize.
“What we found when we were doing this film was that a lot of the time these people, even in their private time, even though they’re all very distinct and different, a lot of them have so many of the same fears and anxieties and desires in their life,” Suleymanian said.
Sofia Feliciano, who served as a producer, co-director and co-writer, said the film also explores how people’s insecurities can make them feel more isolated than they actually are.
“How ironic is that we are so worried about what other people think when they’re doing the same exact thing as us,” Feliciano said.
Feliciano said the filmmaking process reinforced the importance of collaboration. Rennie was initially assigned as cinematographer and editor, but all three filmmakers contributed to the film’s visuals, editing and other parts of production.
“By the end of it, we kind of just took away roles and we were like, ‘this film was made by these three girls,’” Feliciano said.
The festival screening is also an opportunity for Feliciano to see their work alongside other emerging filmmakers.
“It’s hard to feel like we fit in a space like a film festival,” Feliciano said. “No one else is going to know that we’re mass comm students, we’re just going to be filmmakers.”
“Eyes On Me” is a 12 ½ minute documentary by producer and co-creator Larkin Denton and director and co-creator Spencer Pannill. The film explores imposter syndrome through the experience of Richmond performer, Maeve Hickey, also known as Shartchan.
The production lasted about a month and collected 11 hours of footage before cutting the documentary to its final runtime.
Filming took place primarily in Richmond, with one day spent in Virginia Beach visiting Hickey’s family and childhood home.
“I chose an idea behind imposter syndrome because I feel like imposter syndrome is something that I really had to overcome like my four years here,” Denton said.
The filmmakers wanted to examine how identity can become intertwined with other people’s perceptions, particularly for artists and other people with public-facing careers. Denton said the film centers on the internal doubts that can persist even when someone appears successful from the outside.
Through the film, the filmmakers hope audiences look beyond the personas people create online and recognize the person behind them. Denton said Richmond’s growing “microcelebrity” culture can make it easy to forget that people with public followings still experience ordinary emotions and insecurities.
“When you are your only you, you kind of have to be your only supporter when you’re doing or creating something,” Denton said.
Pannill and Denton said the experience also taught them the importance of collaboration. Denton focused largely on production and gaining access to people and performances, while Pannill handled much of the camera work and editing.
“Both of our names are written all over it so much because we continued to collaborate on it and I would never do a project any different than that because it was awesome,” Denton said. “I’m super proud of both of us.”
The film also looks at the pressure of being an independent artist. Pannill said creators can become their own primary source of support while simultaneously dealing with self-doubt.
“It is just about the voice inside your head telling you that you’re not good at these things that you do and that the people around you think a certain way about you, even though it’s not true,” Pannill said.
Pannill said that every filmmaker’s voice deserves to be heard.
“If people walk away from the film feeling that it’s not just about me, it’s also about you watching it, then I would think we had succeeded,” Pannill said.