Student film produces interdepartmental blend

By Morgan Steger
The Collegian

Fresno State junior Bryan Harley hasn’t had a free weekend in months.

He and the other cast and crew members of the student acted and produced short film “Moses” have been spending every waking moment of their weekends shooting scenes for the film, which will have its debut at a student-run film festival this month.

“Everyone has been giving up their weekends for the past two months,” Harley, who is co-directing the film, said.

The film is the product of a collaborative class, drawing students together from multiple majors such as theatre, music and mass communication and journalism, to create a narrative film.

The script was provided by theatre arts professor Edward EmanuEl, the production crew is stocked with mass communication majors, theatre students are lending their acting talent and music students are busy cranking out a score for the film.

With more than 30 students from different backgrounds working on the project, there was tension at times but an overriding passion for creating a great film brought everyone together. “There’s been a lot of yelling but there’s also been a lot of happy moments,” Harley said. “It was really a great experience working with people from various departments.”

The film’s tight budget of less than $600 meant that success was based on the volunteer efforts of the students involved, said mass communication and journalism professor Don Priest, who is overseeing the production elements of the class. “The students want the experience,” he said. “They’ve done a really good job.”

Logan Rapp, who plays the title character, said unity of purpose was essential. “With multiple majors you have different styles of thinking,” he said. “Without that spirit of cooperation, the whole thing would have fallen apart.”

The film explores the life of Moses, a wandering hobo with a mysterious past. “He’s really a strange-looking kind of guy,” Harley said. “You wouldn’t want to be in a dark alley with him.”

Harley described the film as a mélange of mystery, crime and drama, not unlike an episode of “Law & Order.”

The movie opens with Moses tucking into a trash bin for a night’s sleep, failing to realize that it contains the lifeless body of a child. Given his creepy appearance and penchant for sleeping in dark alleys, Moses is fingered by the police as a likely suspect in the child’s murder.

Through a series of flashbacks, the real story of Moses is revealed, Harley said.

Rapp, a broadcast journalism student, said the experience, his first acting role for a film, was intimidating but fun.

Rapp is used to working behind the camera and said learning to express himself in front of it was key, especially since he is in every scene. “Acting is completely different,” he said.

Rapp finished filming his final scenes last weekend in downtown Fresno. The class chose a house on L Street to serve as a backdrop for a flashback scene. “It pretty much looked like a crack house,” Rapp said.

“It’s pretty authentic.”

Besides filming in dilapidated houses, the class has been carting equipment around Fresno State’s campus, in search of the perfect spot.

The group found their police interrogation room in the psychology building, Harley said. They took over a child-observation room, cleared out all the pint-size furniture and changed the room’s demeanor from inviting to sinister in order to film the scene, Harley said.

Now that filming is complete, the production students are putting in overtime to whittle 10 hours of raw footage down to a 20-minute film, Harley said.

The finished product will be screened Friday, May 11 at 6 p.m. in the Leon and Pete Peters Educational Center in the Student Recreation Center, he said.

“We’re probably going to be working up until 5 p.m. that Thursday,” he said. “We have to finish the movie or we don’t get a grade.”

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