Scoville has been the center of a lot of activity on campus lately, with CAMS’s newfound ascendancy as a major. The Cinema and Media Studies folks put on a television show last year, made a documentary about students going without computers, and dominate every year at the annual DVD fest. Now they’re up to something again.
Alexander Cooney ‘11 is planning to shoot a medieval Western on campus.
Yes, you heard that right. According to his plan, it will have “the themes basically of a Western, but set in medieval England.” Sort of the way Japanese filmmakers took inspiration from Westerns to make their classic movie, “Seven Samurai.”
On September 25, Alexander and his friends held auditions for the six roles in the film. The audition consisted of a readthrough of a scene from about the middle of the screenplay, a conversation over roasted venison between Alistair, our hero, and a young soldier he has taken under his wing (how the deer wound up dead is a long story). Since venison is hard to find in Northfield, a bowl of cheesy popcorn stood in. The auditioneers played Alistair, while Max read the soldier’s lines.
Three people came to the audition, each giving very different interpretations of Alistair. The first Alistair described a battle from his past as if it was the awesomest boss level on World of Warcraft ever. The second went for a more cowboy approach. The third presented a more world-weary, cynical Alistair.
Don’t be surprised if you’ve heard of Alexander Cooney before. The short film he made in collaboration with Robert Kennedy, “Captain Rork and the Professor’s Map,” won first place at DVD fest last year. No, there is no comps project as a motive. He makes these films for fun, and you can see many of them on his blog, www.blarbus.com. “I eventually want to try to do this for a living,” he says.
The film, which will be titled Alistair Sloan, is slated to be completed by the end of the term, and Alexander is planning to figure out a way to exhibit it. He hopes to shake the film community at Carleton up a bit with the production. There’s more to film than such extremely short works as DVD fest and The Carleton Show. Eventually, he says, “I’d like to see short films become as common as ETB productions.”
