“The main event in the film is about taking the mother’s ashes to a waterfall to be released, but there is kind of a family dispute around that: the father isn’t ready to let go, the stepdaughter wants to let go right away and the daughter wants to make peace between them,” Gay said.įilming locations include Porters Restaurant in downtown Medford, Rogue Valley Roasting Co. Until recently, Spurling-Snyder and her peers have been in pre-production to film “Eighth and Sand,” a drama about a family coping with the anniversary of their mother’s death. “It’s really great to be able to collaborate with them and support each other and see everybody’s strengths and really come together to make a project.” “It’s just amazing because the majority of my work in the program has been during COVID-19, so this has really been one of the moments where I got to work with a bunch of other students,” Spurling-Snyder said. But now she is glad “The Crew Experience” opened up. Spurling-Snyder wasted no time taking her other SOU classes. He recommended Spurling-Snyder start with “The Crew Experience” as a production assistant, but the pandemic hit, putting the program on hold. “Everything about this is designed to make it feel like a real-world job,” Gay said.Ĭhristy Spurling-Snyder, one of 36 students enrolled in the course, contacted Gay in 2020 when she wanted to enroll in the digital film program at SOU. Once accepted, they got the chance to work with experienced mentors and use new, state-of-the-art technology to film, including cameras from Canon USA. Students who were interested in the course applied and were interviewed and evaluated based on their past experience and portfolio. “I’m expecting that I’m going to start to see quite a difference in what they’re capable of doing right out of the gate,” Kout said. Kout has been involved in SOU’s film school for years and hired students as interns to help make his movies. Gary Kout, an adviser to “The Crew Experience” who also owns Ashland-based Elsewhere Films, applauded Gay for creating the new course. In that sense, “I think what we’re addressing with ‘The Crew Experience’ isn’t a lack of knowledge, but really is that lack of opportunity,” he said.
Gay added several SOU alumni have told him that prior to graduation, they had never been on a professional movie set. “So we needed to create an environment … that felt more professional.” “Our students can make films, but they might be in a position where they would embarrass themselves if they walked onto a professional set,” he said. When there is no professional set to use for learning, Gay said, that can lead student filmmakers to take on too many roles in filmmaking or cut corners in production and not produce the best possible movie. “The impetus behind this program is that we’ve been offering filmmaking for a long time and our students are making solid films, but what we found when we visited our student sets is that they don’t look like professional sets,” said Andrew Gay, principal architect of “The Crew Experience” and associate professor and chair of communication, media and cinema at SOU.
The university recently announced the launch of “The Crew Experience,” a 12-credit, one-term course that makes for a film and media program unlike any other in the Pacific Northwest.
SOU course focuses lens on real-world filmmaking with experienced mentors and top-of-the-line equipmentįilm students at Southern Oregon University are dusting off their camera lenses - after a two-year pandemic delay - in a new course that teaches how to professionally shoot movies.