We, the affiliates and students of Loyola Marymount Univeristy School of Film and Television, have recognized a problem within our school. As it is now, students who have filmed a project this year or semester have originated that project on film, a medium far greater in quality than DVcam or other digital formats.

     We find it to be unfair for the LMU SFTV to require its students to shoot on an expensive medium but not to show that film how it was intended. We realize that we cannot turn back time but in the very least our films should be seen the way they were intended: in Mayer Theater on the best possible medium: on HDcam. 

     LMU SFTV demands a quality from its students. We are taught to do the best we can with what we have. That being the case we have dedicated what little resources we have to “putting our money on the screen”. Some times even half of our budget is being spent on film and yet the first time our professors and peers view our work they will not be seeing the same thing we have been seeing in the editing rooms.

    With how much effort, time, and most importantly, money, we have put into these films we owe it to ourselves to demand that these films be shown at their best. Logistically speaking, screening in Mayer Theater is very viable. When this problem was brought to professors within LMU SFTV we were told that the euphemistic faculty had decided against it on the grounds that there was not scheduling space to screen all of the films. The projectionists, including Graduate Supervisor William Carnahan, are willing to schedule or re-schedule the screenings in order to accommodate all films shot this year. 

    We, the undersigned, students of LMU, and filmmakers alike want to bring light to this issue and fight for our films to be screened in Mayer Theater, on the best possible medium according to their origination. 

 Thank you, 

 Kirsten Filonczuk and Casey Simon