I praised the Advertiser coffees as the place where a town comes together. In June I took a break from this weekly fret over New Canaan’s short-term concerns. In June we graduate, marry, retire, reflect and recharge.
In 1914, at 73 years old, Claude Monet had established himself among the greatest artists of all time. Each of his paintings sold for what a Senator earned in a year. Nearly blind, he could have retired. Instead, he had a big idea and spent the last dozen years of his life working feverishly on eight large paintings. Too large for most walls, strange to collectors, and not particularly relevant to a world gripped by 40 million deaths in the First World War, views of a pond in his garden were considered a failure by many. They were hung in a dark room and mostly ignored. It would not be until 30 more years passed that we would begin to understand and appreciate. One hundred years later, 1 million people visit Monet’s Water Lilly paintings each year in Paris’s Orangerie Museum. These paintings are among his greatest works. (a small version recently sold for $54 million.)
June is for reflection, introspection and big thoughts. It is a time of renewal and optimism, a chance to re-assess and then to look forward — sometimes way back and way forward. During graduations at New Canaan High School, the College of William & Mary, Elon University and the 600-year old University of St. Andrews, I was reminded of the many blessings we enjoy and filled with an optimism for our future. New Canaan senior Kathleen Reeves said it beautifully: “Combined we can solve the problems we all have our sight set on solving, combined we can raise valleys to new heights, combined we can make what’s wrong, right. Class of 2019, we have power inside and among us that we are ready to ignite.”
Thank you, retiring educators Joanne Rocco, Ari Rothman, and Richard Webb for more than 100 years of combined service to New Canaan’s students. Start your next grand painting.
Welcome new recruits Erin McCarthy, Emily Clark, Joseph Schinella and Giancarlo Vincenzi to New Canaan’s Police force. Our 218-year old town and 130-year old department look forward to the next 100 years of your service.
New Canaan’s Town Council will also begin to take the long view. We are reassessing our role in Town Government. We will begin to define for the public our long-term goals and objectives, setting expectations and priorities at the beginning of every budget year and evaluating our progress periodically. We run the risk of becoming complainers and critics. We want to do more and have convened the first two of many meetings designed to improve the process and, again to quote, “make what’s wrong, right.”
New Canaan is looking back on 50 years of extraordinary growth and prosperity, one of the nation’s great towns with a legacy of low taxes, great schools and great beauty. Like many of our volunteering and retiring citizens, like our graduates, like our recruits, and like Claude Monet at 73 it is time to begin work on our next masterpiece.
Action! Elon students film Coca-Cola and Regal Films contest entry on-site in Virginia
Lillian Engel ’19 and Azzurra Catucci ’18 received $15,000 to produce a 35-second film that illustrates the emotions of the moviegoing experience.
Two weeks ago a team of Elon cinema and television arts majors trekked to Lynchburg, Virginia, to shoot footage for its entry in the 2017 Coca-Cola and Regal Films program, a contest for up-and-coming filmmakers that attracted submissions from the country’s top film schools.
Sophomore Lillian Engel (second from left) stands with the characters she developed for the 2017 Coca-Cola and Regal Films program, which provided Engel and junior Azzurra Catucci $15,000 to produce a 35-second film. The film's script depicts movie poster characters that come to life seeking to quench their thirst. Photos courtesy of Engel
A crew of 13 Elon students and seven professionals helped produce footage for a 35-second film that captures the excitement of the moviegoing experience, bringing to life a script written by Lillian Engel ’19. The production schedule included a long shoot on Jan. 28 – both on location at a farm in North Carolina and McEwen’s Virtual Studio – followed by an overnight shoot the next day at Lynchburg’s Regal River Ridge Stadium 14 theater beginning at 9 p.m. To see photos from the shoots, visit the School of Communications’ Flickr page.
“With the fast-paced schedule the competition demanded, having only two days to shoot at three different locations was really ambitious,” said Engel. “We were up early in the morning and wouldn’t wrap until really late. The overnight shoot was the hardest part, but there was so much energy that it hardly seemed to matter.”
Competing against the best
Engel teamed up with fellow cinema and television arts major Azzurra Catucci ’18 to submit her concept for the Coca-Cola and Regal Films program last fall. Despite competing against more than a hundred submissions, the students were named one of five finalists and received $15,000 to produce their entry. Other finalists hail from the American Film Institute, Chapman University, New York University and UCLA.
As part of the contest, Coca-Cola and Regal Films invited Elon to a two-day filmmaker kickoff event at Coca-Cola Headquarters in Atlanta. Pictured are (front, from right) Azzurra Catucci ’18, Rebekah Richin ’17, (back) Greg Grantham ’97 and Assistant Professor Youssef Osman. As luck would have it, Grantham serves as a creative director at CSE, the contest’s marketing agency. Osman said Grantham didn’t hide his delight at seeing his alma mater in the competition.
The winning film entry, chosen by a panel of entertainment industry experts, will be announced at the CinemaCon conference in March. The film will then debut in Regal Cinemas nationwide later this spring. Additionally, the winning team will receive a RED Scarlet – W RED Dragon® camera package and its university will receive a RED RED EPIC-X 6K camera package.
So what’s Engel’s concept? Boiled down, the script features movie poster characters that come to life seeking to quench their thirst with a soft drink. The main character is a cowboy, accompanied by a nearby astronaut and female pirate.
Engel explained the script’s inspiration came from her own experiences at the movies as a child. “When I was younger, seeing a movie in the theaters was like going on an adventure, so I wanted to write something that brought the adventures you see on screen into reality,” said the Communications Fellow. “I came up with a bunch of generic but classic characters and narrowed it down from there.”
Engel initially submitted her script idea for the 2016 Coca-Cola and Regal Films contest, in which Elon alumnus Eric Hernandez ’16 competed, finishing in the top three. According to Assistant Professor Youssef Osman, the presenting sponsors were enthralled by Engel’s idea, and when she submitted again for 2017 contest she was selected as a finalist.
“They really did love Lillian’s idea, but asked her to work on it a bit, unpacking the concept and some of the details,” said Osman, who has mentored Engel and her contributors. “They made it clear they really wanted her to submit it to the next competition.”
Osman said the judges had some initial trepidation over the concept’s technical challenges, but Engel won them over thanks to a filmed mockup she created with Andrew Steinitz ’17. With a little movie magic, poster characters can in fact become real.
Matt Simmons ’19 and Engel prepare for filming on set at a North Carolina farm.
“I was thrilled they saw enough potential in my idea to suggest I try again the second time around,” Engel said. “They had recommended I go back to school and build a strong team of students, and once I did that I think they saw how prepared we were to work with them and how committed we were to such a big project.”
Engel and Catucci succeeded in building a formidable team, aligning the project’s roles with each team member’s skill set. With Engel serving as editor and Catucci as production designer, the duo enlisted Steinitz as the project’s director and Rebekah Richin ’17 as producer.
While these are the core four members of the project, Engel acknowledged the significant contributions of other Elon students and friends. This list includes alumnus Peyton Lea '10, a Charlotte-based cinematographer, who served as the project’s director of photography. Several professional actors and actresses, many traveling from Atlanta and as far as Tampa, also joined the mix.
“My team is so much larger than just us,” Engel said. “It is such an impressive group. And I think it helps that a lot of us have worked together in the past, so we know what our combined strengths and weaknesses are, and that everyone is passionate about what we’re doing. We love what we do.”
Project preparation
In preparation for filming and the weeks of post-production that will follow, Catucci, Richin and Osman attended a two-day filmmaker kickoff event at Coca-Cola Headquarters in Atlanta. During the early January event, the contest’s five teams gathered for workshops with Coca-Cola and Regal executives; CSE, the project’s marketing agency; legal experts and RED camera staff.
Andrew Steinitz ’17 (red shirt), the project’s director, works with actors at the Regal River Ridge Stadium 14 theater in Lynchburg, Virginia.
While on Coca-Cola’s campus, the Elon trio was educated about the importance of branding, color and product placement, as well as legal matters such as trademarks and copyrights. Richin welcomed the insight, calling the kickoff “absolutely key in preparing us for working with the Coca-Cola and Regal Entertainment Group brands.”
While developing a script, managing the creative process, and overseeing the casting and production have at moments been tedious – and certainly time consuming – Engel and Richin have enjoyed the project’s progress and look forward to its post-production cycle.
“This past month has been one of the biggest learning experiences of my life, and I will be able to take the skills that I have learned during this project with me into all future endeavors,” said Richin.
Added Engel, “Production went really well, everyone was really focused and professional on set, which helped get through each location on time. For me, it was the most unbelievable thing to see the script come to life in front of us. Everyone did such a good job and it’s going to come out really well when we’re done.”
An ‘ambitious endeavor’
A person might wonder why the need to travel and shoot in Lynchburg? The students scouted several Regal theaters looking for the right location, specifically a facility with a marquee that fit their concept. There were two suitable locations within driving distance that fit the bill: Lynchburg and Charlotte. But the latter’s location is under renovation.
Elon alumnus Peyton Lea '10 (right), a Charlotte-based cinematographer, preps for filming on Jan. 28 as Simmons (center) and Steinitz look on. Lea served as the project’s director of photography.
Nevertheless, with filming now behind them, the students know that ultimately they won’t be judged on the appearance of a marquee, but how their script jumps from paper to the screen.
“Our film is very production-design heavy, so the success of it largely depends on how realistic we are able to make our characters seem, and the worlds that they live in,” Richin said.
“It is a challenging technical concept,” added Osman. “But I give the students credit because it is an ambitious endeavor. They have worked and continue to work hard to bring it to together.”
I am so proud of Lillian Engel, winner of the Coca-Cola and Regal Films contest. These photos of Lillian and her team making the award-winning commercial were taken during the production of the commercial and are found at:
Coca-Cola and Regal Films program - 2017
As part of the 2017 Coca-Cola and Regal Films program, Lillian Engel ’19 and Azzurra Catucci ’18 received $15,000 to produce a 35-second film that illustrates the emotions of the movie-going experience. In late January, Engel, Catucci and a crew of 13 Elon students and seven professionals filmed footage for the film. Photos courtesy of Engel.
