McGlynn's film receives award for class assignment
Sarah Flanagan '10
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Features
Wheaton senior Connor McGlynn recently received two of the most prestigious awards at the March 2008 Brandeis University film festival, SunDeis. He won Best Cinematography and Best Undergraduate Film for "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". McGlynn made his film as a final project for his spring 2007 film production class and unbeknownst to him, a T.A. submitted his film to the festival.
For McGlynn, filmmaking has "always been my goal pretty much from when I was fifteen until when I got to Wheaton. My dad is a screenwriter so I'm interested in that side of it." McGlynn originally chose his English Major based on screenwriting ambitions, and his Psychology minor in order to develop characters with emotional depth.
The original assignment that lead to the creation of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" was to produce a film that conveyed some aspect of the director. "Everything I create reflects me in some way. On a project this small of a scale with really one person behind it, it is sort of your own experiences."
McGlynn chose to film in a personal location, his hometown of Pawtuxet Village, Rhode Island. The film also starred his brother and father.
McGlynn came across the idea for the film when browsing his parents' bookshelf of paperbacks from the sixties and seventies. McGlynn chose to base his film off of a short story by Ambrose Bierce with the same name.
"I realized it would be a challenge to shoot but I was so impressed with this short story. Right when I read it I was instantly seeing shots, and seeing what I wanted to do with it. I couldn't stop myself from getting into it."
Limited resources and time boxed McGlynn's ambitions. "Part of adapting something is realizing your own limitations and then changing it even for the better. I really can't even imagine how it would have turned out if I had dropped my brother off a bridge into some water, which is what happens in the short story."
McGlynn explains that he learned the fundamentals of the film process in his Wheaton film class.
"I understood on sort of a basic level, but the specific mechanics of the camera, and using a wind up camera. We were using these really old, sort of vintage Rolex cameras, filming on 8 mm black and white film. You had to wind the camera up and it would shoot for twenty seconds and then you would have to wind it again." McGlynn says that it took five to six hours of shooting to get about nine minutes of film time and that editing took all night.
The Brandeis annual festival is intended to be a forum for student film and includes graduate students and even Alumni filmmakers who work professionally. Nominees include but are not limited to, students from Harvard University, Columbia, Smith and RISD. According to the Boston Globe, films have been submitted from as far away as Austria and Brazil.
For McGlynn, filmmaking has "always been my goal pretty much from when I was fifteen until when I got to Wheaton. My dad is a screenwriter so I'm interested in that side of it." McGlynn originally chose his English Major based on screenwriting ambitions, and his Psychology minor in order to develop characters with emotional depth.
The original assignment that lead to the creation of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" was to produce a film that conveyed some aspect of the director. "Everything I create reflects me in some way. On a project this small of a scale with really one person behind it, it is sort of your own experiences."
McGlynn chose to film in a personal location, his hometown of Pawtuxet Village, Rhode Island. The film also starred his brother and father.
McGlynn came across the idea for the film when browsing his parents' bookshelf of paperbacks from the sixties and seventies. McGlynn chose to base his film off of a short story by Ambrose Bierce with the same name.
"I realized it would be a challenge to shoot but I was so impressed with this short story. Right when I read it I was instantly seeing shots, and seeing what I wanted to do with it. I couldn't stop myself from getting into it."
Limited resources and time boxed McGlynn's ambitions. "Part of adapting something is realizing your own limitations and then changing it even for the better. I really can't even imagine how it would have turned out if I had dropped my brother off a bridge into some water, which is what happens in the short story."
McGlynn explains that he learned the fundamentals of the film process in his Wheaton film class.
"I understood on sort of a basic level, but the specific mechanics of the camera, and using a wind up camera. We were using these really old, sort of vintage Rolex cameras, filming on 8 mm black and white film. You had to wind the camera up and it would shoot for twenty seconds and then you would have to wind it again." McGlynn says that it took five to six hours of shooting to get about nine minutes of film time and that editing took all night.
The Brandeis annual festival is intended to be a forum for student film and includes graduate students and even Alumni filmmakers who work professionally. Nominees include but are not limited to, students from Harvard University, Columbia, Smith and RISD. According to the Boston Globe, films have been submitted from as far away as Austria and Brazil.
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