New York Film Academy - Film School Blog

8th Annual Coney Island Film Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:36:00 +0000

The 8th Annual Coney Island Film Festival is set for September 26-28, 2008 at Sideshows By The Seashore and The Coney Island Museum in the historic Brooklyn neighborhood Coney Island, New York!

Call for entries 2008 now open. Click here to submit.

Entry categories: Feature, Short, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, Experimental, Silent Film, Animation, Music Video.

LATE DEADLINE June 25th, 2008 (postmarked)

EXTENDED LATE DEADLINE July 3rd, 2008 (postmarked)

New York Film Academy Open House

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:10:00 +0000

New York Film Academy is having an Open house on Saturday, May 17th, 2008. Click on the image below or go to the Film School's Open House Page for details.

New York Film Academy’s Picks For Top Twenty Movie Directors Of All Time.

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:18:00 +0000

Click on each director's name to read more about why the The New York Film Academy chose each for their film school Top Twenty Directors List.

#20: Sam Peckinpah
The unprecedented cataclysm of blood-soaked violence that wrapped up Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch was a cinematic watershed.

#19: Billy Wilder
Wilder, a young screenwriter struggling to make a name amid the bohemian decadence of pre-War Berlin, heard a tap on his window.

#18: John Ford
When John Ford self-deprecatingly introduced himself with, 'My name's John Ford, I make Westerns', he had a canny sense of the way he would be remembered.

#17: Sergio Leone
After the muscle-man quickie The Colossus Of Rhodes, Sergio Leone directed a mere six films.

#16: Olive r Stone
Where do you start with a problem like Oliver?

#15: Francis Ford Coppola
Age 35, Francis Ford Coppola departed the 1974 Academy Awards clutching statuettes for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, a place in film history assured.

#14: James Cam eron
The future is what we make for ourselves,' is a refrain repeated throughout James Cameron's first film, The Terminator, and it's a phrase he's clearly taken to heart.

#13: The Coen Bros.
It was as dreamy teenagers one soporific 1960s Minnesota summer that Joel and Ethan Coen decided they should make a film.

#12: Sir David Lean
What is often forgotten amid the beautiful reaches of his vision, his rapturous storytelling and tireless quest for perfection, is what a practical soul David Lean was.

#11: Clint Eastwood
When Clint Eastwood decided to direct the thriller Play Misty For Me, with its cautionary view of celebrity, in 1970 he inadvertently took the first step to a kind of cinematic respectability that had thus far eluded him.

#10: Woody Allen
If ever a line has come back to haunt Woody Allen it is the one spoken by one of the aliens in Stardust Memories, an uncharacteristically sour moment of introspection he borrowed from Fellini: "We like your films, especially the early funny ones."

#9: Orson Welles
"The biggest electric train set any boy ever had," pronounced Orson Welles in 1940, surveying his new domain — or, at least, that corner of it occupied by RKO, the studio that had lured the 24-year-old wunderkind to Hollywood with the promise of absolute freedom to make his directorial debut in whatever fashion he saw fit.

#8: Quentin Tarantino
It must be every film geek's wildest wet dream: you start out as a humble video-store clerk, and wind up slamming an adrenaline-loaded syringe into the solar plexus of the American indie movie scene, becoming a filmmaker so influential, film critics turn your name into an adjective.

#7: Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson is a director who seemed to arrive on the Oscar podium a fully formed auteur without the decades of turmoil to back it up. Before making the biggest trilogy of all time, outside a dedicated fanbase and New Zealand, there was awareness of an ability to realise the most complicated book, bar The Bible, in a way that would be so stunningly lauded both by critics and fans.

#6: Akira Kurosawa
Strip away the literary fabric that now shrouds the works of Akira Kurosawa, delve beneath the Japanese costume and external architecture, and you will discover the throbbing heartbeat of the Everyman.

#5: Sir Ridley Scott
Poor old Tony Scott. He may be one of the finest crafters of blockbuster action working today, but he will forever be huddled in the shadow of his elder brother; the auteur to his movie director.

#4: Stanley Kubrick
It has been six years since Stanley Kubrick died, and if he'd kept to his familiar stately schedule, a movie every six or seven years, we'd be due his 13th. Maybe now is when we really start to feel the loss.

#3: Martin Scorsese
When the Academy convenes in a year a Martin Scorsese film is in contention, the phrase "America's greatest living director" seems to magnetically attach itself to sentences containing the director's name. We always thought that it was rather odd that Scorsese never won an Oscar. In 2006 he was vindicated by winning his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed, which also won for Best Picture.

#2: Alfred Hitchcock
Take a flight of fancy and imagine if Alfred Hitchcock was plying his trade in Hollywood today. Back at his old Universal stomping ground, he'd probably knock off a Collateral or two, play himself on The Simpsons, exec produce episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents CSI Leytonstone (the place of his birth) and still find time for the odd curio designed to rub everyone up the wrong way --perhaps a shot for shot remake of Good Will Hunting.

#1: Steven Spielberg
In analyzing Steven Spielberg, the first thing you need to do is clamber past Steven Spielberg. The success, the deification, a near unquantifiable contribution to not just cinema but modern culture itself, and the reams of praise that smother him like a giant quilt. Given such a position, it almost feels moot to extol virtues that have been ringing in his ears for years. Thus it is to the films, in the end, you must return, to cut them loose from the hallowed tag and understand again why this small guy from Cincinnati, Ohio stands so tall over the medium.

Hard Day's Work

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:36:00 +0000

Episode 2 of the New York Film Academy 's episodic series “Working Stiffs” is up on our website.

This second episode is titled, "Hard Day's Work."

"Working Stiffs" is a short episodic television program produced by New York Film Academy students. It follows the adventures of two roommates who get canned from their corporate cubical farm jobs, which sets them off on a series of entrepreneurial escapades. Keep up on the antics of these two as they try to make things work on their own terms.

Go to the film school's website to view the latest episode.

Abu Dhabi Film School

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:14:00 +0000

In a post titled, “New York film school comes to a theatre near you,” the ArabAd Zone Magazine blog spoke about the opening of our Abu Dhabi campus and the award winning ad campaign done by TBWA\RAAD & UAE.

Read the post here or go to the film school website.

New York Film Academy's Animation Program

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:43:00 +0000

Produced at the New York Film Academy in our 1-Year Animation Program. Directed by Marco di Martino. Learn more about the Film School's Animation Program, any of the Film Schools exciting acting, or film making programs!

Some Of The Best Film Shoot Locations In New York

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:47:00 +0000

We have listed some of the best locations to shoot a film in New York City here. We of course are partial to the film school's location in Union Square.

Figuring Out How To Play For "Change"

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Former New York Film Academy directing workshop graduate, Jonathan Walls, landed his documentary “Playing For Change” at the Tribeca Film Festival. He had the chance to blog about the experience on HuffingtonPost.com:

The concept of Playing for Change was relayed to me in 1999. I had just finished a directing workshop at the New York Film Academy and was excited to dive into the craft of storytelling on a professional level, but wasn't sure where my path would ignite.

Read the entire post here.

Two New York Film Academy Students Document Gales Creek In Oregon

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Joyce Sauber writing for the Hillsboro Argus has a column on Oregonlive.com that talks about a documentary film made by two New York Film Academy Film School Students:

Who were those girls with the movie camera in the Gales Creek Valley this past week?

Eva Maria "Evi" Rudy and Shannon Marie Welch descended on Gales Creek a week ago to shoot two documentary films about Gales Creek - one about the history of Gales Creek and the other about the LNG pipeline issue.

The two women attend The New York Film Academy at Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

Read the entire article here.

The New York Times talks about the New York Film Academy & NBC’s Digital Journalism School.

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:53:00 +0000

The New York Times reported today about the Broadcast Digital Journalism classes offered at the New York Film Academy's in partnership with NBC:

Straying far afield from its core business of reporting the news, NBC News is getting into the education business.

Readers of media-related Web sites have been bombarded with ads promoting NBC News’s partnership with the New York Film Academy. In Los Angeles, billboards for the four-week, eight-week and one-year digital journalism training programs loom large, part of an aggressive ad campaign to spread the word before the first summer classes.

A crying need for training in digital technologies is one of the motivating forces for its new business venture, NBC News executives said. More than 80 prospective students, some of them midcareer journalists seeking to keep their skills up to date, turned out on April 5 for an open house at NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters to promote the program, said Lyne Pitts, an NBC News vice president.

READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE.

About the New York Film Academy & NBC Digital Broadcast Journalism school:

Through study and hands-on practice, students are trained in the fundamental principles, techniques, and craft of digital journalism. This is accomplished through a combination of lecture, demonstration, in-class hands-on production, and the students' own work.

Each student produces a series of prerecorded news projects, shot both single and multi-camera and edited on Final-Cut Pro.

Film School Students who complete this program should be able to confidently produce, shoot, report, record, and edit digital news projects suitable for broadcast. The first semester provides a foundation in digital and journalistic skills that students will apply to more advanced work in the second semester where the focus is on Live, Remote, Satellite, and News show production.

Film Student News - Justine Feldt

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:24:00 +0000

This came by way of the Consuming Louisville website:

Winding Road is a low-budget independent film, funded solely by (Justine) Feldt and her co-producer and assistant director, Claire Thixton. Because of Louisville's thriving art scene and support of independent artists, Feldt was able to find many volunteers and musicians to help make the film a success. The film was entirely shot in Kentucky, with the majority of scenes filmed in the Louisville area. As a female filmmaker, Feldt is an advocate for gender-equality behind the camera. Feldt, who has attended the New York Film Academy and was apart of the 2006 Samsung Fresh Films competition, hopes that Winding Road will lead her to more filmmaking opportunities.

Read more here.

New York Film Academy In Rome, Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:41:00 +0000

The Film School and Acting School at the New York Film Academy is coming to Rome, Italy with Filmmaking Workshops starting MAY 5th, 2008.

The New York Film Academy is going to Cinecitta Studios in Rome, Italy. We’re holding 4 and 6 week filmmaking workshops in this new location, giving students the opportunity to shoot on Cinecitta Studios sets.

The Workshops start MAY 5th, 2008. A limited number of applications will be accepted.

Email us for more info at cinecitta@nyfa.com.

www.NYFA.com

1930's Animation Found On YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:54:00 +0000

File this under what could have been for animation. Learn more about the film school and it's animation program.

Miss America Wins New York Film Academy Scholarship

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:26:00 +0000

Magazine Empress Reports:

Another happening in history occurred Friday Evening. Crystle Stewart of Missouri City was another African American to win the miss America Pageant at the Planet Hollywood Hotel. She beat out Leah Lavino of Mississippi and Tiffany Andrade of New Jersey for her crown.

Stewart scored high in three categories the swimsuit, evening gown, and in her interview. She runs a party-planning and motivational speaking company. Stewart also models professionally with dreams on of taking on international philanthropy. Her crown offers her an apartment in New York City, a two year scholarship at the New York Film Academy, and an opportunity to run for the miss Universe Pageant this July.

Read more here.

Matthew Modine At The Film School

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Matthew Modine comes to see student's work from the One-Year Acting for Film workshops. Go to our film school website for more info.

New York Film Academy's Road To Abu Dhabi

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:46:00 +0000

See the news item about our Abu Dhabi film school campus. The story recaps all the media coverage we've been getting.

Bloggers and News media can go here: http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/32622/

Working Stiffs Premiers On The NYFA Channel

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:19:00 +0000

"Working Stiffs," is our episodic series produced by New York Film Academy Film School students that is showing both at the Film School website and on YouTube. Episode 1 - titled, "9 to 5" kicks off the series. Watch for the next episode, coming soon.

New York Film Academy Graduate In Top Ten For Short Film Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:16:00 +0000

New York Film Academy’s Film School Student John Callejas is looking to make it big with a short film contest at Upromise, a website that helps people save for college. The prize is $25,000 and John hopes that voters will chose his video, “Passion” as the winner. Already “Passion” has made it to the top ten. The rest is up to the American public who can vote at Upromise’s website.

Support our Film School graduate John Callejas is reaching his dream. And congratulations to John for making it this far. New York Film Academy Film School students go far and we applaud them.

Read a full article about John Callejas in the Stony Brook Statesman.

Carefully tending the future

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:13:00 +0000

Stuart White and Alice White Ages 30 and 28, Hurdle Mills Stuart and Alice run Bluebird Meadows. Alice's love is growing flowers. Stuart is a graduate of the New York Film Academy. They sell Wednesdays at the Carrboro Farmers' Market and Saturdays at the Durham Farmers' Market.

To read the rest, go here.

‘Bleeping’ ads proving a winner with U.S. audiences

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:01:00 +0000

More traction from the New York Film Academy's Film School Promo. This time from U Talk Marketing website.

Why risk a TV ad being censored by the advertising watchdog for containing rude words when self-censorship with a ‘bleep’ or two could win you more viewers than ever imagined?

Mimicking how television and radio broadcasters obscure bad language in live news coverage or taped shows is now being used by U.S. marketers in ads and videos.

Often covering up actual controversial words in a script, the result is often humorous but is also making brands look risqué and edgy while raising the question of what can be considered decent or indecent in society today.

Manufacturers adopting the tactic include Philips for their Norelco Bodygroom product. The soundtrack for the personal trimming device ad created by Tribal DDB Worldwide includes bleeps while images of nuts and a hairy peach are flashed on the screen.

Meanwhile in an ad for Bud Light, also created by DDB and entitled ‘Swear Jar’, employees are shown swearing like troopers in bid to save enough in the jar to buy a case of their favourite beer.

According to the brand, the ad has about 12 million viral views so far, with 2.7 million alone on YouTube.

In another commercial, this time for the New York Film Academy, a dodgy word spoken by the filmmaker Brett Ratner (pictured) is bleeped.

Read the rest here.

Marketers Find a Sound That Draws a Crowd

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:49:00 +0000

IN cartoons, the Road Runner goes “Beep, beep.” On Madison Avenue, the popular onomatopoeia is pronounced “Bleep, bleep.”

Advertisers are winking at the contentious issue of content regulation by using bleeping sounds in commercials and video clips. The bleeps mimic how television and radio obscure bad language in live news coverage or taped reality shows.

Many times, the bleeps heard in commercials are covering actual expletives, which are written into the scripts solely to be censored.

For instance, in a commercial for the New York Film Academy, a crude word spoken by the filmmaker Brett Ratner is bleeped.

“We were playing poker and he lost and I said, ‘Instead of giving me money, why not do a commercial for the film school?’ ” said Jerry Sherlock, director of the academy. “So we made it into a whole joke.”

(Image Caption: The filmmaker Brett Ratner in an ad for the New York Film Academy with a vulgarity covered with a bleep. Ads with bleeped words are gaining popularity.)

Read the rest of the story here.

Intro to Improv with Kurt Braunohler

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:46:00 +0000

Off the Improv Resource Site:

KURT BRAUNOHLER teaches improv at the The Peoples Improv Theater, New York Film Academy, and Stuyvesant High School. He has run corporate improv workshops for such companies as Pepsi, Red Bull, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has run workshops at improv festivals across the country as well as in Toronto and Munich. His improv creations include: The One Man Jam — a fully-improvised one man Harold which appeared at the Chicago Improv Festival, the Neutrino Video Projects (chosen for the HBO Aspen US Comedy Arts Festival and awarded "Improv Ensemble of the Year at the Chicago Improv Festival), Chengwin and Chunk, and Kurtbot. He co-hosts a monthly variety show, Hot Tub, with Kristen Schaal, and performs improv every Wednesday at the PIT with the Faculty. He has been improvising in New York since 1998 and teaching since 2002. He was trained by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Armando Diaz, Kevin Mullaney, and Ali Farahnakian at the UCB, Rebecca Sohn and Mark Sutton from the Annoyance Theater, Liz Allen, and Miles Stroth from Improv Olympic. He recently created an improv and sketch comedy show for the Noggin Network. Learn more about this class, and other classes at the film school!

NYFA at Boston College

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:14:00 +0000

The Film School at the New York Film Academy will be at the Boston College Admissions Fair!

Auditions for student film

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:11:00 +0000

Sometimes we find things out about our own Film School students from other blogs and website. Here's a case of that so we decided to repost it here. The below was found on freecastingcall.com:

New York Film Academy filmmaking student is looking for actors for her final thesis.
‘Encantada’ is a 9 minute short film that tells the story of how Danny’s childhood is taken away when the only relative he has left is diagnosed with Alzheimer and dementia.

Roles:
Female / 51-60 yrs. / Any Ethnicity.
Gladys: A very sweet and caring grandmother is in charge of her grandson until she gets Alzheimer.

Male / 15-17 yrs. / Any Ethnicity.
Danny: Bright brown eyes, brown hair and very tender face. Danny has to grow up and take care of his grandmother when she is diagnosed Alzheimer

The shooting will take place from May 12th to 18th, 2008. Please send your resume and headshots to: soleafilms [at] gmail [dot] com.

Resident filmmaker presents screening, discussion at UConn Stamford campus

noreply@blogger.com (Film School at NYFA) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:35:00 +0000

From the Stamford Advocate about one of our Film School students:

The University of Connecticut in Stamford will hold a screening and discussion of a Friedrich Durrenmatt film adaptation next week.

Resident filmmaker Michael P. O'Toole, a recent UConn graduate and student at the New York Film Academy, will present his first mini-feature, "The Breakdown," based on Durrenmatt's short story "Traps."

The story takes place on a summer day in 1964, when a traveling salesman's car breaks down. The salesman comes across a country house, explains his situation to an old man working in the garden and asks to use the telephone. The salesman is obliged to stay for dinner and the old man, a retired judge, invites two friends over to join them. The three men suggest a parlor game at dinner, a friendly mock trial where the salesman is put in the role of the defendant.

Read the rest of the article here.