Cari Callis, screenwriting area coordinator at Columbia College Chicago.
This week, The Take Three spoke with Cari Callis, a screenwriting professor at Columbia College here in Chicago. Listen to the full audio interview, or read the transcript below.
The Take Three: The Take Three is very happy today to be speaking with Cari Callis, screenwriting area coordinator in Columbia College Chicago’s School of Media Arts’ film & video program. Cari, how did you get involved with film in the first place?
Cari Callis: When I was in graduate school I started to teach part-time at Columbia in the screenwriting [department], and then I fell in love with the idea of being able to teach students how to tell stories that had meaning to them.
TTT: What’s your role with students, and what do you do with them on a regular basis?
CC: I teach two to three courses per semester, so I have a lot of contact with both the beginning level students and the upper level students. And in the undergraduates I teach all kinds of courses– everything from Adaptation, which is one of my favorites, to Screen Treatment and Presentation, which is kind of a pitching class, to recently I designed a vampire class. We have genre classes and comparative classes and all different kinds of courses to appeal to a variety of different students.
TTT: What are Columbia’s priorities for students?
CC: I think all of us feel, in the department, that it’s kind of our role to help them discover, not just what they love, but also what can they explore and discover about themselves and about the stories that they have to tell. There’s quite a bit of an industry that’s in Chicago. I would say the majority of is probably in post-production. The opportunities are there. You have to be a little bit proactive in finding them.
TTT: Do you have any recent success stories of students of yours? Anyone who’s made it in Hollywood?
CC: Success stories? Oh, all my students are success stories. [laughs] Even if it’s not a Janusz Kaminski, who graduated from Columbia and is Steven Spielberg’s cinematographer, there’s people that you never hear about. The gaffers, and the PAs…it’s kind of a joke that Columbia College students are everywhere in L.A.
TTT: Cari, I heard recently that Columbia College’s film program is changing, and I’m not sure if that’s the curriculum or other changes, but could you please briefly describe that for us?
CC: If there’s one thing that all of us as faculty members agree on, it’s that the curriculum should always be sort of evolving and growing. Because of our size– we’re the largest film school in the world– we attract all different kinds of students. You know, from documentarians and animators to narrative filmmakers and people who want to work in the industry, to those who want to make independent or even underground, experimental films. And traditionally, we’ve sort of emphasized independent filmmaking, but over the past few years we’ve expanded our teaching of Hollywood industry model filmmaking. And I think that’s going to be even more defined when we complete the Media Production Center in January. It’s two sound stages and a motion capture stage, along with complete production design facilities in classrooms. So I mean, our goal is still to provide an environment where filmmakers can grow and develop along a whole variety of different models. But as modern technologies evolve, it’s increasingly important that we educate our students to work on a variety of different modes, and we’re trying to reflect that. The website is Film At Columbia Dot Com. And on that website, there’s information about the semester in L.A. program, internships and many of the opportunities that we really encourage our students to take advantage of while they’re there.
TTT: Cari, thank you so much for speaking with us today.
CC: You’re so welcome Diane, it was a pleasure.
