An interview with student filmmaker and producer of ‘Teddy’
This is one of seven stories in KCPR’s Short Cuts series, highlighting the Cal Poly student films debuting in the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.
Interdisciplinary studies (ISLA) sophomore Laurel Franz is part of the ISLA 341 Cinematic Processes class with Professor Randi Barros, where she worked on short film “Teddy.” Before ISLA 341, students take ISLA 340 Storytelling as a prerequisite to develop skills such as screenwriting for ISLA 341.
KCPR News Reporter Cayden Tan sat down with Franz to discuss the production behind “Teddy.”
LAUREL: The film I worked on is called Teddy, and we had a group of about five people,
CAYDEN: Do you remember the logline, or could you give a summary?
LAUREL: The plot is there’s this young girl who really wants to play with her older brother, and he’s kind of uninterested and kind of rushes her aside, and she kind of has a disoriented home life. It’s just kind of about her and her relationship with her brother and how that evolves over the film.
CAYDEN: What type of roles did you guys have and what was your role?
LAUREL: I was the producer for it, so I reached out to the actors, scheduled everything, and made sure everyone was on task. We had a cinematographer and production design and she did a lot of the shots and everything like that, and also came up with costumes and everything that was in the background of our shots. Our writer also directed the film, so she really worked with the actors on everything, and then we had someone doing sound, who, you know, just held the boom and made sure the audio was clear. We also had someone as a production assistant making sure everything was running smoothly on set.
CAYDEN: What was your favorite part of the process?
LAUREL: My favorite part was definitely working with everyone on it; it was a really fun experience. I loved going to the set on the shoot days and working with the actors. It was really fun.
CAYDEN: What was one of the challenges you faced during the process?
LAUREL: One of the challenges we kind of had at the beginning was that we kind of struggled to find an actor to play Dean, which is the older brother character, and we kind of had to search around for a little while. We were even thinking of switching the gender to make it like a sister’s story, but we ended up finding someone really great for that.
CAYDEN: Will you be at the Film Festival on Monday?
LAUREL: I will be at the Film Festival on Monday. I’m really excited to see all of our films on the big screen.
“Teddy” will be screening at the San Luis Obispo Film Festival at the Fremont Theater on April 27th. More information is available on their Instagram @cal_polyshortcuts26.
