The dichotomy between art and product was the linchpin of his experience. “Going into the film world, you know when you’re writing for film you’re going to have to give to a director’s will. You’re writing for a director, or the director’s writing through you,” says Cannon.

This creative process was far less personal for Cannon than the cerebral process he uses for composition classes within the Harvard sphere. “A lot of what you’re writing is for effect instead of for deeper art. It’s a lot more surface writing.”

Selowsky made similar observations. “Harvard’s music major is very academic,” she says. “It’s history of music, theory of music, analytical seminar music, it’s not based on performance.”While Fitzpatrick had taken creative writing classes at Harvard, her Tisch class taught her a different breed of creative writing: creating scripts for a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry.  “Classes at Harvard tend to focus more abstractly on artistic form,” says Fitzpatrick, “whereas in general this class was more industry focused, which was interesting.”

Fitzpatrick found herself learning a whole new way of approaching writing. “My teacher was very focused on story structure,” said Fitzpatrick, “As a writer I’m all about jokes and characters, but being forced... to make sure that that aspect of my script was good was really enlightening.”

THE ART OF THE NETWORK

As in any career, names matter in the art world. The connections these artists made turned out to be just as valuable as the skills they learned.

“The most important thing I achieved was the connections that I was able to make. Especially for film, that’s what you have to have, you have to have the skill set and the talent pool necessary, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to go and meet these people,” says Cannon. “It really helped to have Harvard’s name saying, ‘We support him in doing this project’ to make that direct connection. If I’m considering applying to grad schools, it was really important to go and meet people who were teaching at Julliard... It was helpful in a professional sense.”

Selowsky was fortunate to find herself in the company of professionals willing to share their own experiences with her. “Artistically in Austria, I got a ton of performance experience,” she says, “but I also met a lot of people who work in the opera houses around Europe and they gave me a sense of, ‘This is how hard you have to work, this is what you have to do to get from A to B.’”

The adults in their programs were not the only ones to know. “It helped to meet my peers in Paris,” says Cannon, “to know the personalities of other composers my age. You get some strange ones but obviously there are a lot of great, driven, talented people.”

“The other people in the program were really talented,” adds Selowsky, “and I feel like you learn a lot from the people you’re working with.”

PRODUCING THE ARTIST

After creating an informational video on proper washing in Rotooru, the regional Ugandan language, Schoenberg found her film could capture far bigger pictures.

“It actually opened up into a portrait of the region,” she says, “the interaction between the schools and the community, because the children in the schools are considered very privileged compared to others in the community.” The footage she gathered to explore this relationship will form the basis for work in her junior tutorial this year.

Cannon also is using his summer abroad to inform his academic work in the coming semester. “This year I’m going to be writing a senior thesis,” he says. “I’m excited to be able to blend my experiences into that.” The thesis, a piece based heavily on Japanese tradition, will draw significantly from his summer experiences.

Along with her raw footage, Shoenberg also brought back a sense of perspective from her travels abroad. “I feel like there are two ways to look at my experience,” she says. “You can look at it through my academic growth or my artistic growth, but when I think about having gone to Africa and having had this experience, I think about it in a personal way... I feel like my eyes have been opened to things that would seem obvious but I never really grasped.”

“It definitely gives you a greater appreciation of a different culture,” says Selowsky, who spoke no German before the summer began. “Austrian culture is completely different from America. They’re very conservative, they’re much quieter, so it was very interesting to be able to observe that and be able to appreciate it in contrast with American culture which is so loud and brusque.”

“As an artist, we’ll see, once I get editing and see the final product,” Schoenberg adds, “But as a person, as a global citizen, I think it was absolutely worth it.”­

—Staff writer Eleanor T. Regan can be reached at eleanor.t.regan@college.harvard.edu.