Angela Wolf (C) directs Joanne Clendining (R) on set during the test shoot while Bill Hilferty (back), assistant camera, and actor Brian Devine (R) watch.

Two projects by Film and Media Arts students will soon be a reality thanks to the Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship (CARAS) Program in the Temple University Office of the Provost.

The first is a short film entitled Boxes, by junior Angela Wolf. The other is a short film adaptation of Frank O’Connor’s short story Guests of a Nation, by seniors Alexandra Gibson and Alexandra Peck.

For Wolf, the grant money means her vision will be fully realized on 16mm film – an expensive endeavor, especially on a student’s budget.

“I love the feel of film,” she says. “Up until now, all I’ve been able to use has been video.”

With film quickly becoming an industry dinosaur that she feels will soon be extinct, “I want to use it while it’s still here and still available.”

Wolf’s story is a reflection on an era of her own life in which she felt lost. She had always been a good student and a good daughter, yet when a relationship with an ex-boyfriend ended, she didn’t really know how to deal with her emotions.
“I felt like no one prepared me for these real-life decisions,” she says.

Wolf always tries to put a little bit of herself in each script she writes, but Boxes marks her most personally revealing story. And it’s so far been a therapeutic experience.
“It has really helped me have a whole new angle when looking at the situation,” she says. Both Wolf and the fictionalized character in the film realize that happiness doesn’t always come in the form of a fairytale ending.

Wolf hopes to tell many more of her stories through film as a professional writer and director. “Film is the best way to tell a story. I love the visual aspect of it,” she says. “Visually, you can have a scene without any dialogue and you can still tell such a great story.”

A storyboard from Guests of a Nation.

For the team of Gibson and Peck, the CARAS grant is eliminating some of the stress from their creative process. With a need to pay for shooting locations (and a desire to be able to pay their actors), the grant put them well on their way to funding their project.

It’s also been a morale booster. “We knew that the project was great, but it was affirmed by the university,” Peck says.

The two Alexes have found creative synergy with this project. Gibson wrote the screenplay and Peck, the producer, will figure out ways to make Gibson’s vision a reality. As a period piece set in 1921 during the Irish War of Independence, that’s no small feat. They’re looking at locations in Valley Forge and in Elverson (in Chester County) as possible locations for their April shoot.

Working from an existing piece, Gibson says, “a lot of the challenge is to make it my own. After I started adapting it, I realized that there were already adaptations,” including a silent film and the beginning of The Crying Game.

As a writer, she hoped to “capture the emotions and the suspense that I felt when I was reading it” as a high school student. With years of history with these characters, Gibson expects casting will be hard.

“I’m going to need Alex to help me, because I have this idea of what they’re supposed to be and who they’re supposed to be,” she says.

“That’s the curse and also the blessing of being a creative and a film student,” Peck adds. “You have this mental image in your mind when you’re reading … of how it’s supposed to be. And then you have to figure out how you can make it work – which we will.”