While traveling in Southern California, I had the opportunity to visit the Margaret Herrick Academy Library in Beverly Hills CA where I got a fabulous tour from Archivist Howard Prouty and met Awards Coordinator Tom Oyers.  I’ve had a long-time email correspondence with these Academy colleagues and it was great to meet them both in person.  Howard has been working to create an Archive of my life-time of production files at the Academy Archives.  I am most appreciative of what Howard and the Academy are doing with 15 dozen boxes of files with details about making all of my movies through the decades, along with prints of most all of my films for the Academy Film Archives.  And it is Tom who makes it possible for me to continue as an active member of the Documentary Branch, no matter where I am living like in Singapore now, in screening documentaries every year for Academy Nomination consideration.

Selfie by Ben Shedd at the Academy library with Howard Prouty and Tom Oyers.

I traveled to the CILECT Conference – Centre International de Liaison des Ecoloes de Cinema et de Television/The International Association of Film and Television Schools – representing the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University with the aim to become a CILECT member.  It was like a mini United Nations meeting with film and television faculty from over 60 nations gathering for the biannual CILECT Congress. Included were visits to the CILECT host Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and to my alma mater USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.  The theme of the CILECT Congress was PreVisualization with university faculty and industry filmmakers opening the world of digital movie making for all of us.  Among the CILECT keynote speakers was Chris Edwards, CEO of THE THIRD FLOOR and my old USC Cinematic Arts Colleague Professor and Producer Bruce Block.  Bruce’s key text THE VISUAL STORY: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, Television and Digital Media has widely expanded many key ideas that hundreds of us USC Cinema alums learned years back from Les Novros in his course Film Graphics.  I also met some of my colleagues here in Singapore from other Film Schools, including Senior Lecturer Charles Maideen from LaSalle College of the Arts Puttman School of Film.  An invigorating international week.

Photo Selfie by Ben Shedd at CILECT: With Prof Norman Hollyn, USC School of Cinematic Arts Michael Kahn Endowed Chair in Editing, Prof/Feature Film Producer Bruce Block, USC School of Cinematic Arts Eisenstein Chair in Cinematic Arts, and Prof Francisco Menendez, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Film Department Chair. Norman is the out-going President of the University Film and Video Association [UFVA] and Francisco is the in-coming UFVA President. Good company to be keeping…..