“It’s a weird concoction of my life and all the movies I’ve seen and my friends’ lives,” Palmer says. “I think that’s how [most] art gets made.”
Palmer’s senior thesis budget allowed him to recruit actors and crew on a web site that attracts semi-professionals. Other film students look for their cast and crew by posting to the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club mailing lists and to film club mailing lists on campus.
“To have people give you money to make film doesn’t happen in the real world, but it happens here,” says Palmer.
Even though students receive generous funding and devoted instruction, not everyone is satisfied by the film program—some students say they think that it is not only small but also limited in many ways, including its tendency to focus on non-fiction ilmmaking.
Traditionally, film is divided between documentary (or non-fiction) film and narrative film, the type popularized by Hollywood movies.
For some, the heavy documentary focus of Harvard’s film program creates a gap in the program. And those seeking to work outside the department often find themselves without the financial and technical support they need.
Brooks Newkirk ’03 recalls the almost exclusively pro-documentary stance of the department, which prompted him to switch from VES to physics.
In his free time, he runs a club called Nightfall Films, which manages to make one or two short films a year. Newkirk is now applying to graduate school in film.
Because of his departure from VES, Newkirk voices the difficulties of obtaining equipment, getting funding and finding actors without department support. Filmmakers have to construct their own support structure, as Newkirk has done with Nightfall Films.
Still, film outside VES is alive, with extracurricular organizations such as the Journal of Cinematic Studies and the Dudley House Film Society. Scattered students, Newkirk included, shoot their own independent films.
“The [thing about] film is that there is no set route,” Newkirk says.
While the film program may not provide strong connections to the film industry like schools such as the University of Southern California and Tisch, it demands that students to learn filmmaking thoroughly.
And things have changed within the VES film department: this year a handful of senior theses involve fictional themes, and the department has benefited from luminaries like visiting lecturer Hal Hartley, who is well known for his work on narrative film.
“[The faculty] think of film as a way of going out into the world, exploring it and understanding it,” says Palmer.
After months of arduous filming and editing, the seniors are weary but wiser.
“[Making film] is about breaking out of the insulated world we have here,” Palmer says. “It’s great because you can really reach out to people outside [of the school].”