Dear OHS Film Students,
Happy New Year! I hope this new semester is full of good things for each of you. At the film festival, we’re working hard on evaluating submissions for OIFF 2026 and preparing to welcome the fellows of our inaugural Ouray Film Sabbatical in March. We’re excited to bring them up to meet y’all, and we’ll be working with Miss Cappi on those details very soon.
As promised, I wanted to followup on our discussion via Zoom last fall.
1) Oliver, I know you’re working on a fly fishing project. You mentioned wanting to find a unique way to explore that without falling into the cliches of traditional sports-focused approaches. Take a look at this scene from the famous experimental documentary Koyaanisqatsi. It’s a montage of workers on an assembly line in a hot dog factory. It’s not the most riveting scene to watch, but the way the filmmaker uses music, montage, and speed to defamiliarize us to something we think we understand was revolutionary for its time. It might spark some ideas for you about how to explore being on the water fishing through a short film!
2) I know several of you are working on a mockumentary! I want to share with you this classic scene from the mother of all mockumentaries: This is Spinal Tap. In this brief scene, a rockstar is doing a rather terrible job of explaining his amazing guitars. As you watch this, look at how the director and editor use jump cuts to cut leap around in time within a scene. How does this simple tool help the movie sell the humor in the scene? There are only a few of these cuts, but they’re the secret sauce to making this ridiculous moment work. And it could be a great tool to exploit yourselves in your own work! (You mentioned The Office: They got all their tricks from this movie.)
3) Charlotte, you mentioned working on a single take short film! There’s a long history of one-take scenes that have gone down in cinema history. Check out this one that opens Martin Scorsese's 1990 gangster film Goodfellas. It’s a three-minute one-take that goes down in history as one of the great single-take scenes in the movies. I’m curious to know how you see the one-take approach helping to set the mood and tell the story here. How does one-take (as opposed to several takes interrupted with cuts) help us as viewers discover who these people are and the world they inhabit? Does anything here feel inspiring to you as you work on your own project?
4) Hadley, you had asked what movies that I had enjoyed this year. I owe you and everyone a longer answer. And I’d love to hear what films/tv shows you all enjoyed at the end of 2025. Hit me up with some recommendations.
Jake’s Picks
Quiz Show (1994) - This is now an older classic, but I adore it. A story about corporate efforts to cover up a scandal on a game show in the 1960’s. Amazing cast with a screenplay that is crispier than friend bacon. I love this movie. It teaches me how a film about such a simple story can be so riveting to watch.
So What if the Goats Die? (2022) - This is a beautiful, surreal, and very odd movie from a French-Moroccan director that I love named Sofia Alaoui. It premiered at Sundance before we screened it at OIFF 2022. It tells the story of a young shepard on a journey in the remote Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Aliens get involved. It’s wild, and I enjoy reteaching this movie each semester to my intermediate French students.
K Pop Demon Hunters (2025) - I loved this movie. Sue me. I found its use of smart animation, an extremely thoughtful script, and terrific voice performances to be one of the best animated films of the last 10 years. I can’t get enough of this movie.
Sinners (2025) - Yes it just broke the record for the most Oscar nominations for one film (16). Quick caveat: This is one that I highly recommend watching with an adult or discussing with an adult before you seek it out, but this is an instant classic. A vampire movie that intelligently explores the thorniest chapters of American cultural history through horror, global music, and fantasy? That’s some bold risk-taking. It paid off.
Let’s get another virtual meetup on the books! Can’t wait to connect with all of you and Miss Cappi in person this spring. Until then, I hope this semester brings you lots of good opportunities to make movies, watch movies, and talk about movies.
Best,
Jake