By The Keystone Newspaper How the director and editor is adapting to his leadership role.
By Byron Mantoan
It was dead silent in Rickenbach Learning Center room 4. The echo of every footstep could be heard on the empty film set. Spotlite, KU’s filmmaking and TV production club, is preparing for its first major project of the semester. Nathan Durante, Spotlite’s president, arrived early.
Photo Courtesy of Spotlite
As the time of the meeting arrives, club members begin trickling into the studio and the room slowly begins to fill with chatter. Durante, busying himself in the front of the room at the desktop, greets members as they walk in. In an interview, Durante reflected on becoming the president of Spotlite and approaching his first big project while in charge.
Durante is a cinema, television, and media major and had been involved with Spotlite for a while before becoming club president. He worked on the audio for the first episode of “The Golden Zone” and directed the short film, “Nighttime Neighbors.” His first e-board position in the club was treasurer. Durante stepped up in the spring 2024 semester and became the club’s acting vice president when the position became vacant. The same semester, Spotlite’s president went on an internship, and Durante was tasked with running the club.
Spotlite’s next project, “On Set”, a parody of “The Office” taking place on a film set, will be the club’s first major project with Durante as president. When the semester began, the club focused on training its new members with the film equipment.
“We saw a jump right after the involvement fair,” said Durante. “We broke out the camera and microphones right away just to make sure everyone was comfortable with the equipment.”
As president, Durante ensures that “the gears are running smooth,” on all productions. “The work is a lot more evenly dispersed this semester since I’m not treasurer, vice president, and president,” said Durante.
Durante is an undergrad in his junior year. After graduating, he would like to work on a film set as a tech, maybe fixing equipment, not unlike the lighting grid in Rickenbach room 4 that he has experience working on.
The process of creating a Spotlite project, from the conception of the idea to its completion, is a complex, and sometimes chaotic, undertaking. The ever-changing schedules of students can make a solid crew for a shoot hard to pin down. Each step of post-production such as rough cut, color and audio, is assigned to a different member of the club.
“We’re students, you know? So it is a little bit all over the place,” Durante said. “Thankfully we’ve all made time to either help with set design or show up on an external shoot day.”
After the pre-meeting interview, Durante addresses the club. A few minutes after 6 p.m. around twenty to twenty-five students have amassed in Rickenbach room 4.
This meeting would be the second of two pre-production days for Spotlite’s next short film. As the meeting gets started, the club breaks into groups: the set builders, the camera people, the audio people, the four actors, and a lone screenwriter. Durante bounces from group to group, answering questions, and making small talk with club members.
Prop walls are put up and weighted down with sandbags, only to be rearranged to give the set an “authentic” look. The set builders raid the prop closet for items to populate the set. The closet is crammed with plastic plants, bookshelves, a dozen dead flip phones, a stuffed animal, a Holy Bible, an issue of “Bitch” magazine, and other assorted items from who knows where.
At the same time, Durante meets with members of the e-board to discuss the shooting schedule. He apprehensively lays out a plan on how the club could divide up the work over a few days.
“Does that sound good to you guys?” he asks.
“You’re the president, it’s up to you,” says Lindsay Ferguson, the club secretary.
“Oh my God, you’re right!” Durante laughs, “That’s what we’ll do.”
On the studio floor, Durante goes back to supervising.
As the evening creeps closer to 7:30 p.m., the meeting starts to wrap up. Pictures of the set are taken so that they can be replicated on the day of the shoot. The set is then disassembled. Within fifteen minutes, it’s gone. Cameras are packed up. The actors finish their read-through. All that remains of the evening’s work are a few extra scuffs on the floor.
Durante rounds up the club to give some specifics of next week’s shoot. There’s the prospect of a fake fire in the film that would require smoke effects. The club would be risking setting off a fire alarm. “I don’t want to go through public service,” says Durante.
He officially ends the meeting to a round of applause. After a long productive night, all the authority and confidence Durante had built up, and had spoken with during the evening’s interview, has been depleted. As the other club members start to leave, he turns to the e-board. Half exasperated and half joking he says, “How the heck did I become president?”