American Cinematographer - May 2006 - 86

San Francisco,
at

began working part time
Academy of Art in 1995, in what is

now

called the Motion Picture and Tele¬

vision

Department. Shortly thereafter,
a few years off to work at
Tippett Studio on visual effects for the
features Cats & Dogs and Evolution.
"When I came back [to Academy of Art],
I taught in the Animation and Visual
Effects Department, and I realized
pretty quickly that there was really no
bridge between that department and
the motion-picture/television depart¬
he took

ment.

I created this class in visual-

effects

cinematography because I felt
departments were
missing things because the two didn't
students in both
interact."
The "Movie of Your Life" video
was

out

A

For the video of

Trip Through Film History
by Jon D. Witmer

Spencer Day's
"Movie of Your

Life," Day takes
the audience

through

some
of cinema's

defining
imagery,
replicating
scenes

from

such classics

as

Citizen Kane

(above and
below). Sean
Mitchell, who
served

as

director of

photography,
used the video
as a

teaching

exercise in his

visual-effects

cinematography
class at the
San Francisco

Academy of Art.

When

cinematographer Sean
Mitchell landed an internship with Allen
Daviau, ASC right out of college, he
must have had a hunch that his career
was

heading in

a

good direction. Even

effects

cinematography course at Acad¬
emy of Art University in San Francisco,
Mitchell recently guided the creation of
a music video for Spencer Day's "Movie
of Your Life." The project gave the class
the opportunity to combine stage work
with digital tools as they reconstructed
scenes

from such films

as

Citizen Kane,

The

he could not have anticipated he
would one day have a chance to put his
own stamp on some of the most iconic

Lady From Shanghai, The War of
the Worlds, Casablanca and Singin' in

images in classical Hollywood cinema.
Working with students in his visual-

Mitchell, a freelance cinematog¬
rapher who works in Los Angeles and

so,

the Rain.

actually the second project to come
of Mitchell's class. A year earlier,

the class had created

a

spec commer¬

cial, and when Mitchell offered the

again, interest in it had grown so
much that he offered two sections, one

course

for

graduate students and one for
undergraduates. "When the time came
to shoot or do any real collaboration, I
put the two sections together," he says.
"That's another important aspect of this
that was unusual: we had undergrads
and grads in two different departments
together in the same room at the same
time.
"I thought the problem with the
commercial was that the produc¬
tion value was less forgiving," he adds.
"But there are music videos that play on
MTV and VH1 with budgets anywhere
from $25,000 into the millions, and the
spec

audience is used to that. I knew that if
we

didn't

quite hit the mark

we

mind, [the medium] would be

had in
a

little

forgiving."
Organization is crucial for any
production, and the need for an efficient
structure is especially great when the
crew comprises students who are
contending with other classes and,
more

82

May 2006
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