Rounding out its first year of helping students develop ideas for the stage and screen, 1UP Student Productions will have its end-of-semester showcase this April.
Senior Jordan Epstein is one of the student filmmakers involved in 1UP. Like many budding directors, Epstein admits that filmmaking was always a passion of his, though it wasn’t until college that he decided he wanted to make a career of it.
“One of my best friends and I, through junior high, high school and what-not, have always been making films. Usually mockumentary type stuff just to keep us entertained,” Epstein said. “In college it actually began taking form into something I wanted to take seriously.”
Epstein cites filmmakers like Victor Moon for his “takeaway show,” guerrilla style music videos among his major directorial influences. Dean DeBlois also makes the list, though perhaps more for his work on “Heima,” a documentary about the Icelandic rock band Sigur R?s, than “Lilo & Stitch.”
“I’ve watched [“Heima”] probably a hundred times or more. I honestly believe that every frame, every shot composition is perfect. You can’t do better than that,” Epstein said.
For more mainstream directors, Epstein cites the Coen brothers as an influence to both his directorial and writing style, mentioning their longer-than-typical-Hollywood shot lengths and the sense of humor in their writing.
“They haven’t fully gone into the blockbuster style yet. They’ve stayed true to their own, which I really admire,” Epstein said.
Aside from the typical production class work, Epstein has created a handful of short films since joining 1UP last semester. One of these was “Fatum,” a film written by fellow 1UP member Kaley Ingenito about an envisioned version of purgatory, as seen at the moment of death.
“[Dimethyltryptamine] is a naturally occurring drug in your brain that’s released when you’re born, a little bit when you dream and then when you die,” Epstein said. “So [“Fatum”] is like an envisioned version of what happens when you die and that drug is released into your brain.”
His latest project is a yet untitled sci-fi short, also written by Ingenito. The story takes place some time in the future, when a fatal and widespread blood disorder appears in the population. The only way to cure the disorder is by draining “universal donor” blood-typed persons for a full transfusion to the infected.
“For every one full body of universal blood, you can save five people’s lives with the infection,” Epstein said. “It’s that classic conundrum.”
Through the film, we follow five “universal donors” who are on the run from private contractors hired to collect them for their curative blood. The five live as a family unit, moving through the dystopian wastes of a ravaged country.
Most shooting has been done on-location in Madison, the crew transforming unused rooms into desolate hovels and empty factories into the shadow of a once-prosperous industrial sector.
“It’s fun to just kind of make what we can with what we have. I like that challenge,” Epstein said.
The film is being shot with a Digital Single-Lens Reflex camera. Typically used for still photography. DSLR shots have an incredibly shallow focus with overblown colors that Epstein enjoys for their tendency to lend the film a more “poetic” feel.
“If you saw any [DSLR image], you’d immediately be like ‘now I understand,'” Epstein said. “Just watch pretty much any indie music video, and it’s probably been shot on [a DSLR].”
Epstein is looking to submit the film to a student film festival in Denver over the summer, but in the meantime it will be debuting at the next 1UP showcase, along with a slew of other student-made stage and screen productions.
“I get to make the movies, but [the 1UP administrators] really make sure that the showcase gets put together, that everyone’s where they need to be, that everything gets funded,” Epstein said. “It couldn’t have happened without them.”
1UP’s showcase is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 23 at the Union Play Circle.
