Alumni Roundtable
On Saturday, February 2nd, the Film and Digital Media Department organized an event to bring back alumni to the program to speak on their experiences at UCSC and the paths that led to the careers they have chosen today. They featured Tamara Maloney, Mo Perkins, Dylan Wilcox, and Sarah Schechter to come and hold court in a Q&A roundtable that was informative and insightful for students who were looking prospectively at the film industry. These individuals ranged from independent grassroots filmmakers to studio executives working in Hollywood who had completed the film program over 10 years ago.
Tamara Maloney graduated from UCSC in 1997 and moved on to the UCLA MFA program at the School of Theater, Film, and Television. She has worked as a producer, editor, and director of both feature-length documentaries and her own shorts. She worked as an editor and producer on Haskell Wexler’s Who Needs Sleep? (2006, USA), a documentary that examines the lack of respect for worker rights in Hollywood, where many studios forced some of their employees to work 60-70 hour weeks. Most recently, she worked with UCLA alum Grace Lee on American Zombie (2007, USA) as the editor of the film, and helped another panelist, Mo Perkins, produce her newest film, A Quiet Little Marriage (2008, USA). Based upon her experience as an independent filmmaker, she said the best advice she could give to students coming out of the program was that the peers we were sitting next to would be the peers with whom we would be working and building relationships.
Tamara Maloney Q&A from Aaron Joseph on Vimeo.
Another Alum, Mo Perkins, followed in Tamara’s footsteps, graduating in 1997 and afterwards entering the UCLA film program. Right out of school she “actively tried not to find a job.” It was hard for her not to be employed as she freelanced in the film industry. She made it a “personal goal,” however, to write a script or have a finished project by the end of each year. She cites UCSC’s film program as a huge influence on the way she made movies, claiming the guerilla tactics she used to film in local Laundromats had a “freeing effect” that invoked the ideals that any location was part of the film set. However, going to UCLA was also an avenue for her to see how an organized film project worked, and like Tamara she found peers who worked well with her. “The act of learning how to make a film is very intimate, and when you’re in this pool of people and you’re all at the same level, you’re all climbing up together. When you go to work with them, you’ll trust them and form creative bonds that I think will last a lifetime.”
Mo Perkins Q&A from Aaron Joseph on Vimeo.
Dylan Wilcox, a former Critical Studies student at UCSC, left after graduating and went back East to New York where he was working in publicity at Miramax. He decided that was not for him and tried to make his way into acquisitions, which stuck. From there, Wilcox moved onto Focus Features to become Director of Worldwide Acquisitions. He distributes product for Universal through Focus Features and Rogue Pictures. Dylan says, “It’s really great that I’m able to come here today because when I was at UCSC, I didn’t know this world existed where I got to go to film festivals, watch movies for a living.” Something that was refreshing to hear from him was that this independent arm of Universal was very interested in the international and “offbeat” market. “Everyone’s dream is to get their movie released, in either New York or Los Angeles and then it expands to 2,000 theaters and you’re winning the Oscar… that might happen but before that there are probably other steps that are going to happen first and there’s a wide range of distribution channels for your movie.”
Dylan Wilcox Q&A from Aaron Joseph on Vimeo.
Sarah Schechter graduated in 1998, the same year as Dylan, out of the Critical Studies program. She worked with him on an SDS about teen films from the 1950’s to the present. Being in love with Santa Cruz and its outrageously cheap $200 rent rates, Schechter stayed on a year after school, but did not really find a job she liked. Finally she moved down to Los Angeles, where she still was not able to find anything she liked until she ended up at RKO pictures. Even though Schechter hated the job, she made friends who eventually led her to work on some projects at Barry Mendel Productions, where she helped on Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, USA) and The Life Aquatic (2004, USA). From there she moved to an assistant job at Warner Bros., where she was an executive assistant handling 10 bosses at once. After really pushing herself to do well and stay connected with all these people, Schechter finally got her shot and was promoted twice to become a VP of Production at Warner Bros. Currently, she is working on a Nelson Mandela picture, The Watchmen (Zack Synder, est. 2009, USA), 10,000 B.C. (Roland Emmerich, 2008, USA), Get Smart (Peter Segal, 2008, USA), and countless other studio pictures. “Whether I’m learning about Nelson Mandela, or I’m learning about the 1972 Olympic Games war, or Terrorism in the early 60’s in Europe, there are always different things to learn about which is really exciting.” She talks about being very passionate about movies and giving a warning that not everyone in the industry loves movies. Some of them are people who run it like a business. “The one thing I can say is I didn’t have an ego, I worked really hard, and I think people appreciated that at the end of the day. That’s what got me to where I am now.”
Sarah Schechter Q&A from Aaron Joseph on Vimeo.
The Film Department and UCSC would like to thank these four alumni for coming to our event and sharing their experiences with us.
