Northwestern Student Theatre

In truth, it's unlikely. The production process for films in RTVF doesn't lend itself to a distribution system analogous to the performance schedule that STUCO maintains. Of the twenty to thirty full-fledged productions each year, most aren't completely edited, locked, color-corrected, and fine-tuned until late Spring; it's simply a very time-intensive process. Of course it could be done earlier -- the Spring grants, after all, lock in a matter of weeks to be finished in time for the premieres in June -- but the editors of these projects are put under a lot of pressure, and I think most of them would be resistant to adding an extra time-pressure component to their work in the other quarters. Turnaround time is a trade-off of making films, unfortunately; the silver lining, of course, is that our projects have a longer 'shelf life,' so to speak.

Another significant factor is that the intended audience for most of the grant films isn't actually fellow students; many filmmakers in RTVF create their projects with the intention of submitting them to festivals around the country, whereas STUCO's mission, generally speaking, is to create theatre for a more directly local community. (I haven't even seen many of the films that I've worked on, because I missed the premieres last year to work on a theatre show.) Also, we primarily make 10-20 minute shorts here, which take approximately the same budget and manpower as a full-length play does in STUCO. So it would take several RTVF productions to make a 'night's entertainment.'

As for class projects, most RTVF classes are workshops, as are most Theatre classes. Although the films are usually complete by the end of the quarter, they're not finished works. They're full of experiments and mistakes, and we don't always want them to leave the classroom.

So in short, RTVF productions will probably never have the same presence on-campus that STUCO theatre does, though I think it's an equally important form of student artistic expression. (The same thing goes, in a similar way, for visual artists and literary folks, who haven't really been represented in this discussion yet. That said, the connection between theatre and film is more important to me because they have so much in common, as the two dramatic arts.)

So I guess that does present a really difficult gap to bridge. It seems to me that production is a much easier place than distribution to engage conversation between the two, because they're more similar in that respect, but I'm interested to know your perspective on it.

There is a STUCO-like group, actually, though it is not nearly as active. It's called URSA (Undergraduate RTVF Student Association), and it exists primarily as a liason between students and faculty in RTVF. The co-chairs for 2013-14 are Zach Lorkiewicz and Allie Romano. The URSA email is ursa.nurtvf@gmail.com. Perhaps a meeting between Amalie and Brandon and Zach and Allie could get a discussion going in the higher levels?

That said, I agree that it is a hard gap to bridge. I think you're right, that they do require slightly different skill sets, at least technically. But we're all, for the most part, trying to tell stories, and skills from one do carry over to the other, one way or another. Taking Lighting Design in the theatre department, for example, helped me hugely to conceptualize light and to think about it artistically, which helps me equally in both fields. The equipment doesn't carry over, but the ideas do, and I think that goes for many, many aspects of each field.

I guess the bigger and more frustrating / hard-to-resolve issue is the communication problem you brought up. There is, I would say, a similar pressure to do Film-and-Only-Film in RTVF. Or rather, to work on a certain number of films in a certain quarter or year to feel like you're really part of the production community. Not universal, of course, but  think it's accurate. Film people tend to look down on theatre as a simplistic, dying art; theatre people look down on film as a restrictive, technological spectacle. So people don't think they have much to gain from crossing betweeen the fields, but having done it, I think they do.

I don't expect the departments to open up their classes to cross-registration; there are such acute shortages of key classes as it is. So that's not really a solution, any time soon. Maybe a partnership between STUCO and URSA, but that would be fairly hard to achieve and limited, given the difference in influence and function each has within their respective majors. I feel like a good starting step would be to start with designers. Expanding the Theatre Designers page to encompass Film and Theatre Designers. Posting RTVF crew calls to TWIST, instead of just casting calls. Posting open design positions in STUCO shows to the RTVF listserv / facebook page. Actively recruiting within the other major for positions where there are personnel shortages. (RTVF, for example, is in dire need of production and scenic designers.)

On top of that, maybe something for STUCO and URSA to work on is hosting a series of joint panels and workshops. Dawn Mora taught a well-attended workshop for film students on working with actors earlier this year. I think that RTVF people would go to a Theatre Lighting for Film Majors workshop (and vice versa), and I bet that Theatre designers woud be interested in a Film Set Basics sort of workshop too. Film groups bring in professionals all the time to sit on panels; I'm sure there's a group of panelists out there that would appeal to both majors as a STUCO-URSA event.

At that level it seems doable to me. How do you get the ball rolling though?