Inspector 42 wins top drama, top director awards BYU’s Theatre and Media Arts Department won two “student Emmys” over the weekend, both for the same short film.The BYU student film Inspector 42, a live-action film about killer shirts, took home the awards for best drama and best director Saturday from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation.The “Directing Award” is one of the most prestigious honors handed out at the College Television Awards ceremony.“We believed in the project so much,” said Inspector 42 student producer Lyvia Martinez, a senior from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. “But it was great to hear that after all of our expectations and all of the hard work we put into the film, someone else found the value in our work and in the art that we’d created.”Recent grad Nathan D. Lee won the Directing Award, which was the top student Emmy for directing in all categories.“I tend to keep things pretty calm and reserved a lot of the time, but when I heard the news I was ecstatic,” Lee said. “It’s exciting but there’s also a measure of responsibility that I feel comes with it. It’s an honor and a privilege and a gift to have been awarded something like this.”Saturday was a big day for other BYU student film projects as well. BYU’s Center for Animation brought home its 10th student Emmy in seven years for its film X-ing (Read more here.) and BYU music student Richard Williams landed the best music composition award to bring BYU’s 2010 haul to four. (Read about Williams here.)Lee says Inspector 42, a movie about killer shirts set in the 1950s, was inspired in part by a little tag he found one day in the pocket of a new shirt. The tag said, “Inspected by 42.”“I remember standing there thinking, ‘Somewhere in the world, this is someone’s job,’” Lee said. “This guy exists somewhere. There is an Inspector 42. What on earth does a shirt inspector do? What is the life of a shirt inspector?”In Lee’s vision, Inspector 42 works at a shirt factory where the motto is “Think Shirt Safety.” While on the job, the inspector lets a couple of shirts pass inspection that really shouldn’t because he’s trying to meet a quota. Those shirts end up terrorizing the people who wear them and causing a few fatal accidents.The 20-page script was shot in Salt Lake City in just under two weeks and includes the work of about 50 students on set, crew and cast combined. The movie was shot on 35 millimeter film and runs about 30 minutes in length.“The quality of mentoring students by TMA film faculty and the commitment and determination on the part of the students to create works of excellence are bearing fruit in the national film conversation,” said Rodger Sorensen, chair of the TMA Department.Both Lee and Martinez said the film would have been impossible to make without the generous help of faculty and resources from BYU’s TMA department, including the help of faculty mentor Jeff Parkin.“We could not have made this film if we were not at BYU,” Lee said. “It just couldn’t have happened.”Paris Barclay, a well-known TV director and producer (NYPD Blue, ER, Cold Case, NCIS) had this to say about Inspector 42 at the awards ceremony:'About compelling, emotional and insightful programming: I honestly believe this film is about as good as it gets. It can go toe-to-toe with any episode I’ve done, certainly, and most of what you see on your television screen. It presents a moral conundrum for the hero and, I’m quoting again from the Academy, ‘in a compelling, emotional and insightful way.’“And not only does it do that, but I have to say that I watch a lot of films by a lot of young filmmakers, but this, the casting, the performances, the shot selection, the look, the pace the feel, the period, art direction, the production design and most importantly the emotional payoff of this film showed a talent to be reckoned with.'So, this award honors outstanding achievement in directing for comedy, documentary, drama or narrative series. So this goes across the board. This is basically our best director award. I want you to take another look at this most impressive film.“This entire film plays like jaw-droppingly awesome episode of The Twilight Zone. It is really great. It talks about honesty in our lives and in our society. It’s brilliantly written by the director and his writer-producer partner, Lyvia MartÁnez. Ladies and gentlemen, the directing trophy and $1,000 cash award goes to Nathan Lee of Brigham Young University.'Source: BYU News

Over the weekend the BYU Center for Animation picked up its tenth “student Emmy” in the past seven years, this time for the farce X-ing, about an ill-fated pair of lovesick armadillos at a truck stop.(The BYU student film Inspector 42 also won a first place award in its category and the prestigious “Best Directing” honor. Also, a BYU music student won for music composition.)The film represents a reversal from the program’s most recent Emmy-winner. While Kites was a poignant tale of a grandson’s love, X-ing (pronounced “crossing”) identifies itself clearly as slapstick comedy with a major shock in the opening scene.Simply finishing the film was a major achievement, BYU animators say, let alone winning the third-place College Television Award in the animation category, bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation. That’s because the BYU program has become a victim of its own success.After each successive student Emmy and student Academy award, more representatives from top studios such as Pixar and DreamWorks flocked to campus, eventually plucking students for internships and later full-time jobs. Many seniors with key responsibilities on X-ing graduated and were hired away before it was completed.“That’s a very good thing — that’s why we’re here, to prepare the students for jobs, not to win awards. But it’s becoming more and more disruptive to the films,” said Center for Animation Director R. Brent Adams. “I’m very proud of the juniors who slugged this film through to finish it.”One of those juniors was Stacey Bethers of Salt Lake City, who took over responsibility for lighting in X-ing after her predecessor was hired by Digital Domain to work on the remake of Tron.“The light lead’s job is to direct the viewer’s eye and enhance the emotion of the film,” Stacey said, giggling a bit while watching a scene she lit that’s designed to surprise viewers. “When you start on one of these projects, you can’t really see the end from the beginning, but then you get there, and it’s such a blessing.”Stacey went on to an internship at Pixar, where she learned more about lighting from work that had been done on Up. Then she got to work on commercials for Toy Story 3. Graduating in a few weeks, she has interviews with three top studios.“This is such an amazing animation program, with professors who have actually been in the industry and can show us how to get to that level,” Stacey said. “Hopefully I can get there, too.”Moy Parra, a junior from Mexico City, was the film’s animation lead and joined his peers in countless hours of painstaking work over about 12 months.“I can’t believe it’s really done,” he said while re-watching his characters in the program’s million-dollar virtual reality theater. To Parra and his peers, the student Emmy is great, but “seeing it on the screen is the payoff, and seeing the audience reaction, seeing that they laugh when you hoped they would laugh.”James Jackson and Jenny Harris Johnson were co-producers of X-ing and joined Adams at the awards gala Saturday in Los Angeles to pick up the award. It’s Jackson’s second student Emmy — he also co-produced Kites. He now works for Pixar. Carson McKay, the director of X-ing, is now at DreamWorks.“This success continues to open doors and allows us to place more students of value out into industry,” said Kelly Loosli, associate professor of theatre and media arts. “In return, more and more studios are sending out their best to our campus,” noting that the Center hosted Steve Hickner, director of DreamWorks’ Prince of Egypt, earlier this month.Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, declared BYU students 'the best in the industry' at a press conference on campus in 2008.'Over the years, Pixar has worked with a lot of different universities around the country and hired people,' Catmull said. 'One of the interesting things is, all of a sudden, in the last few years, we found that BYU has risen to the top. BYU has an extraordinary program here.'Another new development represents the BYU Center’s multidisciplinary focus. Later this month the BYU computer science department will graduate its first crop of students with an emphasis in animation. One of them will be Christopher Long, of Provo, who was a go-to guy for technical issues on X-ing. He put his computer science major to work by writing new code when the students’ software didn’t make the film look how they wanted it to. He also is in final interviews at a major studio.Noting other campus departments that contribute to the animation program, Loosli said, “All of Visual Arts, Theatre and Media Arts, Industrial Design and the School of Technology, and Computer Science should be commended.”Ryan Woodward, Cynthia Hogan and Seth Holladay were also faculty mentors on X-ing.Note: Because X-ing and other BYU animated films may still be entered in film festivals, they are not available for viewing online in their entirety. The Center for Animation hopes to release them sometime in the future.Source: BYU News

BYU music student Richard Williams has won the 'student Emmy' for music composition for his ragtag piano and Dixieland jazz score on the BYU Center for Animation film, Mashed.

Brigham Young University will once again host the 2010 U.S. National Amateur Dancesport Championships, one of the nation's largest amateur ballroom dance competitions, Thursday through Saturday, March 11-13, in the Marriott Center.

By Hilarie Ashton

By Katie Roundy

The Brigham Young University Museum of Art needs volunteers to help with a special exhibition, 'Carl Heinrich Bloch: The Master's Hand,' which will be on view at the museum from Nov. 12, 2010 through May 7, 2011.

Q'd Up, the Brigham Young University School of Music's faculty jazz quintet, will celebrate its recently released fourth CD, 'Quintessence,' during a special concert Wednesday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Madsen Recital Hall.

'Tartuffe,' the classic comedy by one of the greatest comedic playwrights of all time, Jean Baptiste Molière, will open the winter semester theater calendar at Brigham Young University Wednesday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Pardoe Theatre, Harris Fine Arts Center. It will run through Saturday, Feb. 6, except Sundays and Mondays, with a matinee performance Saturday Jan. 30, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15, $13, $11 or $8 with a BYU or student ID and can be purchased online at byuarts.com, by phone at (801) 422-4322 or in person at the Harris Fine Arts Center Ticket Office. As the play opens, Orgon, who is in the twilight of his life, has decided to give all his worldly possessions to a pious holy man named Tartuffe. However, this holy man is not all that he seems to be, and Orgon's frantic family and friends are not fooled by Tartuffe's behavior. They try to convince Orgon to abandon his folly. Otherwise, they will lose all to Tartuffe. ''Tartuffe' is a very funny play, but there are strong and urgent consequences resulting from the characters' actions, consequences that sometimes have dire effects,' said director Stephanie Breinholt. 'I want the audience to feel that edge, not just revel in the humor.' In a unique twist, the story's design and acting styles span a period beginning in the 1600s and ending today. 'The play is a farce, but it has dark and lasting implications,' said Breinholt. 'I've found similar qualities in the work of Tim Burton.' 'I was also inspired by Cirque du Soleil. I recently saw their production 'O' again, and I immediately thought of Tartuffe and the line in the script referring to Orgon's household: 'It's like a madhouse with the keeper gone,'' she said. 'We made the servants of the house into 'Cirque' clowns who see everything and often understand what other characters production don't.' The cast includes Dallin Allred as Orgon and Andrew Veenstra as Tartuffe, as well as Anne Fleming, Alexis Wardle, Christie Clark, Rafe GÁ¡ndola and Tanner Garrett. Production staff members are original music composer David Jon Banks, dramaturg Wade Hollingshaus, stage manager Camee Faulk, scenic designer Eric Fielding, lighting designer Amber Coyne, costume designer Haleh Risdana, sound designer Kt Harrel and makeup and hair designer Jaynanne Meads. The production is sponsored by the Department of Theatre and Media Arts. For more information, contact Stephanie Breinholt at (801) 422-4631 or at stephaniebreinholt@hotmail.com. Source: BYU News

Brigham Young University's Dancers' Company under the direction of Pat Debenham will be presenting an innovative performance during 'Dance in Concert' Thursday through Saturday, Jan. 28-30, at 7:30 p.m. in the de Jong Concert Hall, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Saturday.

Living Legends, a performing group at Brigham Young University celebrating the Polynesian, Native American and Latin American cultures, will perform Friday and Saturday, Jan. 15-16, at 7:30 p.m. in the de Jong Concert Hall.

Brigham Young University's best singers will compete for the 'Singer of the Year' title in the School of Music's Young Artists of Voice Competition Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, Jan. 12, 14 and 16, in the Madsen Recital Hall of the Harris Fine Arts Center.