{"id":14731,"date":"2019-08-26T13:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T19:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=14731"},"modified":"2019-08-26T13:45:55","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T19:45:55","slug":"cc-alumni-film-july-rising-soars-to-success-brings-graduates-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2019\/08\/cc-alumni-film-july-rising-soars-to-success-brings-graduates-home\/","title":{"rendered":"CC Alumni Film \u2018July Rising\u2019 Soars to Success, Brings Graduates Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cJuly Rising\u201d \u2014 a film written, directed, produced, edited by, and starring a slew of Colorado College graduates \u2014 has taken flight. The film is the creative output of a group of CC students, graduates, and staff, including Robert Mahaffie \u201915<\/strong>. Premiering at the 23rd Sonoma International Film Festival in March, it won the Stolman Award for Best American Indie Feature film.<\/p>\n

A film and media studies major at CC, Mahaffie taught the Advanced Filmmaking class in Block 8 of last year. After graduating CC, he worked as a paraprofessional for the Film and Media Studies Department, and CC\u2019s Office of Communications, before moving to Los Angeles to work full-time in the film industry. Now, with teaching a block under his belt, he says he\u2019s literally \u201cdone everything possible at CC that is related to film!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJuly Rising\u201d all started as the thesis screenplay of Chauncey Crail \u201917<\/strong>, Mahaffie explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was something that he\u2019d been developing for two years by that point. Before he turned in a final script, we\u2019d started casting roles for the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of the summer of 2017, the project took shape, with Crail and Mahaffie as the lead producers. Casting calls were held in Denver, Los Angeles, Colorado Springs, and San Francisco. In order of appearance in the film, a total of 17 CC graduates appear as cast members: Joshua Zambrano \u201918<\/strong>, \u2028Doron J\u00e9Paul Mitchell \u201914<\/strong>, Elle Gannon \u201918<\/strong>, Will Stockton \u201919<\/strong>, Thomas Crandall \u201916<\/strong>, Robert Mahaffie \u201915<\/strong>, Ben Coldwell \u201917<\/strong>, Julia Greene \u201919<\/strong>, Lauren Antonoff \u201915<\/strong>, Madeline Ng \u201920<\/strong>, Anna Lynn-Palevsky \u201918<\/strong>, Grace Powell \u201918<\/strong>, Lucy Houlihan \u201918<\/strong>, Sophia Capp \u201917<\/strong>, Nick Merritt \u201919<\/strong>, James Ryan Dinneen \u201916<\/strong>, and Charlie Theobald \u201917<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The film tells the story of 16-year-old Andy, orphaned after the death of her grandfather, who works to save her family pear orchard. Her aunt tries to get her to return to the city, but Andy is determined to stay and retain the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s working to save the orchard from money issues, alone, while also trying to work out who she is. She\u2019s also a woman in a male-dominated world, so she\u2019s got a huge fight on her hands,\u201d Mahaffie explains.<\/p>\n

Using their CC film connections, Crail and Mahaffie immediately involved Houlihan and Greene as co-producers, before starting a location scouting trip. With locations found, the team grew to include Crandall as cinematographer, Theobald as the film\u2019s sound recordist, Stockton as the digital imaging technician, Zambrano as chief grip and electric supervisor, and Coldwell as the assistant camera and second assistant director.<\/p>\n

Filming started on July 26, 2017, and wrapped up on August 21 of the same summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was doing four or five jobs at once. I was a set designer, props manager, and managed all the vehicles on set, as well as a producer,\u201d says Mahaffie.<\/p>\n

After initial shooting, the team hired Meredith Mantik \u201911<\/strong> to edit the film; she\u2019d been working in Los Angeles as an editor since attending the National Film and Television School in the UK for her master\u2019s. With her edits, the team knew what holes they had to fill, bringing them back to their alma mater in late 2017 into early 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Colorado Springs shooting was amazing,\u201d says Mahaffie. \u201cWith CC\u2019s blessing, we used a lot of locations on campus like the Bemis kitchen, the Cornerstone studio space, and around the campus area too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The finishing of the film took most of the next year, with Dinneen as the soundtrack composer. Chris Bittner, CC\u2019s digital arts and media technology director, and his students worked on the sound mixing.<\/p>\n

With the film complete, the question of \u201cWhat now?\u201d came to the fore.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always wanted to submit to festivals, but we had to work on which ones to target to be well received,\u201d explains Mahaffie. Narrowing down took time, with Crail, Mahaffie, and Houlihan deciding on festivals due to their location, film community inclusion, and the festival\u2019s focus.<\/p>\n

The film premiered at the Sonoma International Film Festival, March 27-29, 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sonoma festival is about food and wine, with a heavy focus on strong filmmaking, so our agricultural and local themes matched well,\u201d Mahaffie says. \u201cWe were able to bring our cast and crew to the premiere, which allowed us to reconnect the film with the local community \u2014 and then we won!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was incredible,\u201d says Mahaffie. \u201cThe success was gratifying, but it also allowed our cast and crew to connect with more directors, talent agents, and people in the film world \u2014 that was an unforeseen bonus of the experience \u2014 the professional networking development.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cJuly Rising\u201d \u2014 a film written, directed, produced, edited by, and starring a slew of Colorado College graduates \u2014 has taken flight. The film is the creative output of a group of CC students, graduates, and staff, including Robert Mahaffie \u201915. Premiering at the 23rd Sonoma International Film Festival in March, it won the Stolman…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-14731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-2019","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2019\/08\/cc-bul-sum19-p24.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14731"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14823,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14731\/revisions\/14823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}