Provided

Young-Jo Kim '12, a film major, left, works with actors and cinematographers during his film's shoot at the Schwartz Center.

Provided

Emma Shalaway and Colin Crilley work with a mobile camera during the film shoot for Young-Jo Kim's film, "Unforgiving," in a set constructed in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.

Provided

Students from Digital Media Studio, a class taught by Marilyn Rivchin and Warren Cross in Cornell's Department of Theatre, Film and Dance.

The two main characters in Young-Jo Kim's '12 film are both victims -- Tim, a victim of bullying and abuse for years, and the Chinese food delivery guy is a victim of Tim's brewing anger, which finally erupts in violence.

Kim, a film major from South Korea, is finishing his degree this year after taking a two-year break to complete his country's required military service.

"I enjoy making films in which my main characters have psychological conflicts," Kim said. "In this film, the main character has never been able to 'man up' in certain situations, but finally he gets the chance to."

His film, which has a working title of "Unforgiving," will be shown Dec. 11 at Cornell Cinema in a screening of class projects from Marilyn Rivchin and Warren Cross's Digital Media Studio film course in the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance.

The new course offers students the chance to learn the intricacies of sound and film. Students create film and video soundtracks using dialog recording and multiple microphone designs, MIDI music creation, dialog replacement, and audio filtering and mixing techniques. They're also learning to use audio and video interactively and experimentally for applications like animation, effects, loops and VJ'ing.

Kim said he connected with the main character when he wrote the play three years ago, but after serving in the military, he sees that the character is somewhat childish.

"He sees things as straightforward, but things are much more complicated in real life," Kim said. "I realized that through military service."

Kim served in South Korea's Blue House, similar to the U.S. White House, where he provided dignitary protection.

Because his script was planned in advance, Kim was able to collaborate with the department's production staff, who helped Kim design his scenery and constructed a full-blown film set with furniture and props in the Schwartz Center's Flex Theatre, where Kim's crew filmed most of the scenes during a week in November.

"My hope is that this can be a model for future student film and class projects," said Tim Ostrander '88, the department's props coordinator. "Out of this will come opportunities for students in our shop classes to work on film, as well as theater, projects while also giving film students a real studio/lab space to work in."

Students in Rivchin and Cross' class helped during the filming, as the project called for unusual camera angles, moving cameras on tracks and complex sound sequences.

"The idea for the course was to bring together students in filmmaking and others with sound design or music composition capabilities to develop skills together and create new work collaboratively," Rivchin said. "In Young-Jo's case, we were enabled by the offer of theater staff help, so we made this a model experiment in combining filmmaking, sound design and theater set design with the contributions of many actors, students, staff and two faculty members teaching the course."

During the filming, 20 members of the class and crew helped with makeup, props and making sure sound and camera angles were working.

"It's interesting to be here and see the set built just for this project," said Mariela Ferrer '12, who is majoring in film and Italian and operated a camera for the class shoot. "The overhead shot looks like it's coming from a surveillance camera, while this one is at a regular angle."

Kim plans to return to Korea after he graduates to help run his family's health spa business, but plans to keep making films on the side and return to it full-time in a few years.

Kathy Hovis is communications manager of the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance.