Lights, camera, action

Several students used the summer to get their feet wet in the moviemaking industry, getting a front-row seat to the acting, marketing and behind-the-scenes wrangling that goes into every film.

Jessie Dicovitsky ’11 worked in Beverly Hills as an assistant to an agent at Paradigm Talent Agency, which represents a wide selection of entertainers, from Philip Seymour Hoffman to Adrien Brody. Despite working at a talent agency, Dicovitsky said that her summer experience was not a “glamorous job” meeting celebrities.

“Basically my job responsibilities were doing whatever the agent asked me,” Dicovitsky said. “A lot of it was setting appointments, talking to clients ... everything you see Lloyd do in ‘Entourage,’ I was doing.”

Nonetheless, the experience was still valuable to the visual arts major, who said she was drawn to the film industry because of her studies, which include a certificate in creative writing.

“It’s a hard industry to break into unless you know someone,” said Dicovitsky, who found her job through a recruiting session on campus. “Having the platform to get a legitimate job in the industry really helped.” She added that her summer experience afforded her “something exciting ... something new and something that most people around here aren’t familiar with.”

Lalithra Fernando ’10 took a different path into the industry, following up on graduation with a stint as an associate producer for a short film with several connections to Princeton. Written and produced by Chris Poindexter ’99, “Their Eyes Were Watching Gummy Bears” stars Pedro Hernandez ’99 and includes shots of campus.

“I got involved by responding to an e-mail looking for students to help find locations and such,” Fernando explained in an e-mail. “I did a variety of things during the production, from interacting with the University to making sure random people didn’t walk into a shot.”

Fernando, who said he hopes to produce other movies in the future, added that he learned a lot from watching a professional crew.

“I got a sense of how a production operated as a whole, as well as the little things that contributed to the film’s production value,” he said.

Fernando has already used his production skills to create the web series “Quarter Life Crisis,” which he wrote with fellow Princeton students Mariel Calloway ’11, John Walters ’09, Kristen Davila ’11 and Marissa Lee ’11 this spring and summer. Lee is also an associate news editor for The Daily Princetonian.

After writing was finished, Fernando then enlisted friends from his hometown near San Francisco to film the series over two weeks in August. Before production, he said he had to find good filming locations, build sets, gather props, cast and prepare actors, and make a production schedule.

“I had made short videos with my friends at home in the Bay Area and we wanted some material to produce,” Fernando said, explaining his motivation to undertake the project.

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Calloway, who contributed writing for one episode of “Quarter Life Crisis,” followed up on that experience by working for the development department of the independent film studio Lionsgate, as well as for the management company ROAR.

“I got to read stuff that they’re definitely working on, like Tyler Perry’s new movie and a couple of horror movies that they’re working on,” she said, adding that she was also a gatekeeper for incoming scripts. “My job was mostly just to read it and summarize it and tell the producer whether or not it was worth reading.”

Calloway, who is interested in writing for feature films and television, said she saw another side to the business at ROAR.

“Whereas with Lionsgate I was definitely reading things with an ear towards producing them, I was reading stuff [at ROAR] with the goal of finding out whether or not the person was a good writer,” she said. “With ROAR, I worked with literary managers — their job is to find a writer and send their scripts to production companies. At Lionsgate, I would be reading the scripts that they would submit.”

Calloway, who interacted with such stars as Chris and Liam Hemsworth, noted that with two jobs, she was able to gain exposure to varying parts of the industry.

“I got to learn how Hollywood works, the different pieces of the machine, who talks to who about what ... It was nice to see both sides.”

John Walters ’09, who worked on creating the storyline of “Quarter Life Crisis,” noted that the process involved not only generating ideas, but also criticizing them.

“Filmmaking is almost exclusively a collaborative process,” he said. “Essential to a good piece of filmmaking is that lots of ideas are just thrown around.”

Walters, who hopes to pursue screenwriting professionally, added that the experience forced his group to overcome obstacles of the project.

“We were limited to just a few minutes each episode ... and these constraints force you to really be creative in terms of the story you want to tell — what’s essential to the story, and what simply would be interesting or nice to have.”