Beau Brooks

Studio Art, Marketing and Film & Television Minors
Spring 2020 Graduate

As a Studio Art major with little to no set experience, I joined the magic hour class with the expectation of gaining more hands-on filmmaking experience and adding more breadth to my portfolio. Justin Quinn and I connected on our desire to create something with an element of visual effects and a monster, so we began working together in this class. While Justin took care of many of the producing aspects of preproduction, an area he is very comfortable working in, I wrote several iterations of what became Holla Bear, which would have featured a 5” teddy bear that was converted into a wearable costume by a few helpful friends of mine.

We had just finished casting and were a couple of weeks away from shooting when production got rona’d. Things were a little strange once that happened but being a Studio Art Major and not content to just give up on production altogether, I decided to get experimental. One night of quarantine induced boredom lead to the creation of Sighting, experimental found footage horror short that merged the paranormal with home defense preparedness.

Not long after that, it was announced that the class would continue to work on films, albeit in a very limited capacity. This is when I pitched compositing live action film with animation and work began on Sedgwick, a film combining live action and animation. Justin wrote the script and shot the live action segments of the film. Meanwhile I storyboarded and developed animatics, rigged the titular character, designed the layouts, and finally animated the microfilm. So while I regret not getting more hands on set experience and not seeing the walking talking Holla Bear come to life, I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked on Holla Bear, to have gotten experimental with Sighting and to have brought Sedgwick, another little monster, to life.