By Jodee Taylor
TRAVERSE CITY -- Ian Hollander's first job, back in middle school, was at the Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay, working concessions, or in the projection room, or whatever was needed.
"That's where I got interested in films," Hollander, 23, said.
Now he's making them.
Hollander's short film, "All of Me," is one of 14 "Shorts by Students" screening at the Traverse City Film Festival Sunday at noon at the Old Town Playhouse.
"All of Me" takes its title from the jazz standard song by the same name "that features prominently in the film," Hollander said, and is about a movie director whose heyday was in the 1940s and '50s. Now he's on his deathbed and his son and a nurse are with him. The story revolves more around the son and the nurse than the director, Hollander said.
The short film was Hollander's senior thesis project at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. He graduated in May 2008.
Short films typically are shorter than 40 minutes -- that's the cutoff point instituted by the Tribeca Film Festival, where Hollander has also worked -- and have a less rigid structure than feature films, he said. Some have narratives and some don't. Some entries in the Traverse City festival -- which is showing Shorts for Adults, Shorts for Kids and Shorts by University of Michigan Students, as well as the Shorts by Students -- are animated, some are live-action, some are stop-action and some are computer-animated, Hollander said. The shortest is one minute long; the longest is 21 minutes.
Aaron Jaffe's short film, "Trim," also was a senior project. Jaffe, 19, graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in 2008.
While Hollander said, "People always ask about the budget and people don't like to answer," the budgets for the two movies -- both of which clock in at 12 minutes -- were wildly different.
Hollander estimates he spent about $500 making his film. He used his college's equipment, the college's heatlh clinic for the main setting and cast people who were willing to work for free. The main cost was in feeding the cast and crew, he said.
Jaffe's budget -- while he didn't spend much of his own money -- ended up being close to $500,000. He wrote a grant proposal and received loaned equipment from Panavision that he estimates was worth $300,000.
"It was really hard to pack that up at the end," he said.
Kodak donated film worth almost $1,000 and Jaffe also was awarded a $4,000 grant from the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation to help pay for processing and transfer.
The main character in "Trim" is a woman named Amelia, Jaffe said, who is going in for what could be her last haircut with her longtime stylist.
"It's about making choices to take control of her life when she has no control," Jaffe said.
Neither Jaffe nor Hollander had to go through a formal submission process to have their films accepted into the festival. Hollander has been working -- both paid and unpaid -- for the film festival or festival founder Michael Moore for three years. Last summer, he showed his film to Moore and Deb Lake, film festival executive director, to get their feedback, but didn't really consider that a submission. Next thing he knew, the festival had launched a short-film category and "All of Me" was in it.
Jaffe also talked with Moore and Lake last year, then heard back that his film was in the lineup.
Both are looking forward to Sunday's screening.
"It's a whole new thing to see it how it should be on the big screen," Jaffe said. "It's a different dynamic."
