Film Production Commons^™

The Design Of Time: Envisioning The Future Through Science Fiction Production Design In The Alien Franchise, Josephine Spanier, Charles Howard

Honors Thesis

In filmmaking, the production designer works closely with the director and cinematographer to ensure cohesion and uniqueness in the film’s visual design. This collaboration often provides the designer with a strong degree of influence on the film’s final look, thus shaping the thematic and visual impact of a film on the audience. In highly stylized and fantastical genres, such as science fiction, production design plays an especially important role in creating worlds that may be entirely different from the one we currently live in, while still reflecting the real-world context in which the film was made. This phenomena can particularly …

Robotic Rhythm: A Contemporary Look At Ai-Driven Editing Tools’ Efficacy In Understanding And Replicating Creative Rhythm Editing Techniques., Alexander Selby-Lara, Charles Howard

Honors Thesis

It is undeniable that artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way into the film world. From AI-generated imagery and sound design in two 2025 Oscar nominees — The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez (Pulver) — to weekly updates and monthly beta releases of existing and new generative image and video models, AI-driven filmmaking tools are here to stay. But what does this mean for the post-production workflow? Much like camera development, editing technology has come a long way from flatbed film editors to Adobe Premiere Pro v. 25.0. Yet, despite each technological leap from system to system, the delicate task of …

Overlooked: The Nuanced Struggles Of Autistic Women, Autumn L. Payne

Honors Theses

Overlooked is a documentary short film that seeks to shine a light on the nuanced struggles of autistic women in a neurotypical world. This short documentary consists of three interviews with autistic women from different backgrounds. Each diagnosed during a different stage of life, they reflect on their journeys to receiving an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis and its impact on their lives. These conversations reveal an overwhelming lack of resources for autistic people, especially for women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. With the diagnosis criteria for ASD being historically based on white males, women and …

Cinephiles, Connor J. Mclaughlin

University of New Orleans Thesis Films

“Cinephiles” is a graduate thesis film from the University of New Orleans that was shot on-location across the state of Louisiana in the towns of Robert, Zachary, and New Orleans. The film was written, directed, co-produced, and edited by Connor McLaughlin. They will presume the first-person singular in the subsequent reflection paper chronicling the development, pre-production, production, and post-production stages of the aforementioned fifteen-minute, mixed media short film.

Ray's Real Dream, Rebecca Garba

University of New Orleans Thesis Films

Ray’s Real Dream is a UNO thesis film that was filmed on location in New Orleans, LA, in October of 2024 and delivered in May of 2025. The film was written, directed, and edited by Rebecca Garba who will presume first-person singular (i.e. “I”, “Me”, “My”) in the following reflection paper charting the development, pre-production, production, and post-production of the aforementioned short film and her time at the University of New Orleans. A detailed account of the specifics of how each production element occurred is provided, along with visuals from the set.

Social Media Addiction Explained Through Film, Matthew Layton

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

“How much is too much?” The central frame of my creative work tackles this question through the lens of queerness, addiction, isolation, and self-identity, giving an unfiltered voice to today’s youth. Social Media’s negative effects go deeper than the usual anecdotes of decline in sleep quality, physical activity, and attention span. The ramifications of a negative mental headspace are often overshadowed by flashy promises and a false sense of belonging. The societal impact is especially influenced due to the malleability of the adolescent brain. In 2022, up to 95% of teenagers ages 13 to 17 claimed to use social media, …

A Grieving Heart, Cong Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

“A Grieving Heart” is a 12-minute animated short film about an immigrant woman examining her past in the wake of her American ex-boyfriend’s death. The film features a first-person confessional voiceover, 2D black and white animated imagery, and an original score. The narrator reflects on her Chinese-American upbringing, her past relationship, and her current grief. The film explores how love and loss impact the ways she confronts her immigrant identity, memories, insecurities, and regrets.

As Above So Below, Robin Smith Fedock

Theses and Dissertations

As Above So Below is a short experimental documentary film that reveals an unexpected world of entanglements connecting life, death, and fungi in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Fungi are nature’s decomposers, turning dead trees into soil so new trees can grow, for example. Mycorrhizal fungi perform acts of collaboration and mutualism, delivering water and nutrients to roots of plants through their underground networks of mycelium. As we struggle to find ways of living in and beyond this time of planetary crisis, rife with loneliness and grief, what can we learn from fungi and their entanglements? How can we move beyond dominant …

Out From Under: Stories Of Endometriosis, Prisca Edwards

Theses and Dissertations

Six individuals. One diagnosis. In Out From Under, people living with endometriosis gather for an art-centered workshop. Through collage and conversation, they transform isolating medical experiences into paths of connection and collective healing.

Endometriosis affects approximately one in ten women of reproductive age, yet diagnosis is often delayed by nearly a decade. During this time, many suffer from debilitating symptoms without adequate care or accessible treatment. Out From Under explores the lived experience of endometriosis through the lens of socially engaged documentary filmmaking. Participants share their medical histories, emotions, and frustrations in a structured yet open environment designed for intimacy, …

All You Can Eat, Kelly Schiesswohl

Theses and Dissertations

All You Can Eat is a 2D-animated horror short following the patrons and inhabitants of a bakery as they prepare for its annual pie-eating contest. As the contest nears, tensions rise after the discovery of a dark secret amongst the staff inspires rebellion. Through the visual metaphor of pie and the pie-eating contest, this film explores how sexual violence functions on a systemic level. It explores our collective conditioning to a range of behaviors that contribute to patriarchal oppression and the social cycles that reinforce them across generations. Through design and surreal storytelling, this film captures the urgent threat of …

The Tales Of Maruni, Sikuma Rai

Theses and Dissertations

Sikuma Rai journeys into the fading indigenous genre of Maruni—an eastern Nepali song and dance form—narrating letters to her late grandfather. Accompanied by her father, and a devoted folk musician from an upper-caste background, she traces echoes of memory, identity, and the fragile inheritance of indigenous culture.

Student Film Fest 2025 Playbill, Providence College Department Of Theatre, Dance, & Film

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

John Bowab Studio Theatre, Smith Center for the Arts

Student Film Fest 2025

Thursday, May 1, 2025, 7PM

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS:

Fr. Ken Gumbert

COMPETING FILMS:

Will Drew ‘25, A Day in the Life: Luke Fonts, 3:49

Nariah Scott ’25, No Limit Just Miles Ft. Kimberly May, 4:25

Teddy Lucier ’25, The Growing Game, 5:53

Janet Newman ’27, Marvelous, 5:00

Rodney Lopez ’25, Lost and Found, 7:24

Gavin Sheridan ’25, Born to Die, 9:52

JURY DELIBERATIONS

The 2024 Film Festival winning film will be screened while jury …

Student Film Fest 2025 Poster, Providence College Department Of Theatre, Dance, & Film

Playbill and Promotion

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film

John Bowab Studio Theatre, Smith Center for the Arts

Student Film Fest 2025

Thursday, May 1, 2025, 7PM

Repair Through Recycling, Emma Murdock, Karl Aspelund

Senior Honors Projects

Repair Through Recycling is an instructional website I developed to encourage people to mend their garments rather than throw them away.I see this as a way to help address the growing issue of textile waste, where millions of garments are discarded each year. Many of these are made from synthetic materials that do not break down, contributing significantly to environmental pollution. This project features step-by-step instructional videos I created to teach the basics of mending, skills that are no longer commonly taught. These tutorials cover foundational techniques such as threading a needle and hand-stitching torn seams. The website also includes …

A Narrative-Focused Machine Learning Approach To Predicting Feature Film Success, Arisa T. Trombley

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MS) Theses

For decades, the field of film production has been driven by marketability, and it has relied on gut feelings and subjectivity to produce feature films. The analysis of the relationship between a screenplay’s narrative and a film’s success has been widely overlooked due to the challenges involved in data acquisition and complexity. This study investigates the predictive power of narrative structure on film success and aims to build evidence for hypothesized narrative principles. The results suggest that narrative structural elements exhibit moderate predictive power, with strong support for the alignment of the 2nd act crucial moments and the 2nd act …

A “Little” Solution To A Big Problem: A Documentary About The Hattiesburg Pocket Museum, Savannah Humber

Honors Theses

A “Little” Solution to a Big Problem is a documentary film that revolves around the Hattiesburg Pocket Museum and how it positively impacted its community during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pocket Museum is a small alleyway located in downtown Hattiesburg, Mississippi and is filled with small objects, scenes, and fun activities. The thesis includes interviews with Vicki Taylor, creator of the Pocket Museum, and Lissa Ortego, the first artist to paint in the alleyway. They explain the history behind the museum, the circumstances that led to its creation, and how they kept the museum relevant during and after the COVID-19 …

American Girl(Hood): Gender Performance, Tween Media, And Social Media Content, Mary Carol Dassau

Honors Theses

The American Girl brand of eighteen-inch dolls presents narratives of young girls throughout historical and contemporary settings, as well as manufacturing a line of dolls designed to look “just like you.” Despite the company’s commitment to female empowerment, these narratives still fall into certain tropes of societal expectations for women and are not inclusive of all girls’ experiences. Young American Girl fans and teen collectors on YouTube then take these narratives to create their own original video content, often in stop-motion animated format. These animations typically consist of original stories and characters, which both reinforce the narratives presented by the …

Michigan Fiction, Bryce Durfey

Honors Theses

The screenplay Michigan Fiction follows a failing children's book author who is desperate for another taste of success. His father has told him his entire life that success by any means is all that matters. After a chance meeting with a more successful crime-novelist colleague, and learning of his next book idea, he decides to follow him to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to steal his idea for a book. He stays in a motel where the original killer once stayed and killed. Things go awry when he accidentally murders someone. After the town thinks it's the old killer returning, …

Perfecting The Pride Of All Nebraska, David Swotek

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

For my thesis, I completed a creative project focusing on my involvement in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. I created a documentary/YouTube-style video about the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Cornhusker Marching Band and how much work goes into creating their performances. I wanted to see what work happens behind the scenes that their large audiences never get to see.

To get all the information I needed to create an efficient and effective piece, I interviewed 13 band students ranging in years, instruments, ranks, etc. It was very important to get a large range of perspectives on this piece because …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.