Georgia’s history as a choice for film and television production locations goes back decades, but the industry boomed following the 2005 passage of tax credits for companies spending at least $500,000 in the state. In 2022, film and television companies spent a record $4.4 billion, according to the Governor’s Office, with 412 projects undertaken, including 32 feature films and 269 television and episodic productions.
To help meet the growing need for a capable, creative workforce, CMII opened in 2017, bridging the College of Arts & Sciences and College of the Arts to offer programs in emerging media technologies, including digital filmmaking, visual effects, and game design and development.
The tech in use by students during the spring 2023 semester to create “Rejuvenation” included the latest solutions for lighting, video and sound, according to Luse, who first joined CMII as an artist-in-residence in 2019. In addition to advanced lightweight cameras and lenses provided by Canon, the project received grant funding from Fox Entertainment Studios and AMC to finance other equipment purchases.
The idea, Luse says, was to facilitate a student-led feature film built from the ground up to reinvent the filmmaking process. That meant collaborating across the university, including with partners in the College of Arts & Sciences and the College of the Arts’ School of Film, Media and Theatre and School of Music. It also meant the project needed the right script — one that could be shot on and around Georgia State’s campus — with a cast of characters mostly in their late teens and early 20s. (Though the initial script was rewritten, its basis was formed in a screenwriting class led at the time by Susan-Sojourna Collier, who is known for writing for daytime dramas “Port Charles,” “One Life to Live” and “All My Children.”)
Instead of tripods and dolly track, the camera was affixed to a body-mounted Easyrig a fair bit lighter than a traditional Steadicam apparatus and much easier to use, Luse says. And instead of intensely bright lights mounted atop metal stands and controlled with barn doors and colored gels, the lighting of each scene was “practical,” meaning it blended into the location, emitting from a lamp on a table or from existing overhead fixtures fitted with LED bulbs that could be adjusted remotely for color and brightness.
The result, Luse says, is that the camera operator can be the only crew member in the room with the actors — which can result in a more natural, intimate performance — and camera angles and blocking can be quickly changed without having to move stand-mounted lights and tear up and replace dolly track. If a scene needs to be lit differently, a crew member has only to adjust the LEDs using an iPad app.
Luse says “Rejuvenation” also took advantage of the streamlined workflow made possible by high-speed data transfers, cloud-based audio/video syncing and an almost real-time connection with the film’s post-production house, Moonshine Post, founded by Georgia State alum Drew Sawyer (B.A. ’09).
“The industry has embraced digital as a replacement for the way we do film, but what I think is, if it was a new medium and there wasn’t a history, how would we go about doing it?” Luse says. “Would we say, for example, take the people who are cutting the film and put them 3,000 miles away in a room and only talk to them every once in a while? That’s not what I think you would do. I think you would bring them on set, which is what we did. If we have any questions, we can ask them, and we can look at things. We made them part of our production team.”
From a list of hundreds of students who expressed interest in the project in late 2021, 31 were picked in spring 2022 to be cast and crew members on “Rejuvenation.” That fall, students enrolled in classes with Heath Franklin, a professor of practice in directing and cinematography, and Susan G. Reid, an assistant professor in TV and film directing with an extensive acting and casting background, to prepare for their roles.
This spring, the 31 mostly undergraduate students working on the film took no other classes but earned 15 credit hours toward their majors.
Okwuosa, an interdisciplinary studies major with a concentration in acting, says the eight-hour days during the four-week production schedule were challenging, but rewarding.
“Georgia State keeps surprising me, and telling me, ‘You’re so much more than you think you are,’” she says.
The film is slated for a screening this summer for cast and crew at Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre. Since production wrapped, several “Rejuvenation” crew members have been working with Franklin on his latest feature, “Sonny Boy,” and will receive on-screen credits.
