URI professor Keith Brown gets film-festival award

Keith Brown, a filmmaker and film-production professor at University of Rhode Island, was recently given the Producer’s Circle Award from Flickers: The Rhode Island International Film Festival. The award recognized Brown’s dedication to KidsEye Summer Camp, where is the co-director, as well as one of the first counselors when the program began 18 years ago. At the camp, Brown teaches kids (aged 8-16) various aspects of film production. Brown has also created both documentaries and short films. Brown’s work has been exhibited at the Boston Cinema Census and the Antelope Valley International Film Festival, among others. Brown is also one of the founders of Boston Open Screen, which is an open mic night for filmmakers. He holds a B.A. from the University of Rhode Island and an MFA from Boston University.

PBN: What made you decide to go from being a filmmaker to a teacher of the art?
BROWN: I always wanted to teach – even going into grad school, I really wanted to be able to teach filmmaking at the university level. It’s just really exciting to see students develop their ideas and stories into something they can show to a large audience and really be proud of. I make myself available to work with the students through their pre-production, production and then post-production processes, giving my input along the way.

PBN: How has your transition to digital been?
BROWN: I was schooled in filmmaking with 16mm film. At the time, video was considered to be lesser quality. I still teach 16mm and Super 8mm filmmaking, but I relate the technology to today’s environment. I think it’s important to expose students to traditional filmmaking because I believe that it makes them stronger media makers. It forces them to plan and be economical with their productions. It also forces them to think about the image they are creating by measuring light and thinking before they hit the trigger. I think I have that mentality based on my training. The last short that I shot on – we used a Canon 5D Mark III camera and I am editing with Final Cut Pro 7. I really enjoy shooting on film though. For the course I teach, we were able to rent an Arri 416 camera for a class shoot and it was really cool to expose the students to such a high-end 16mm film camera.

PBN: What do you enjoy most about teaching filmmaking?
BROWN: Teaching filmmaking is really an extension of teaching storytelling. But with this discipline, there is the additional factor of learning technology. I find that many children have a lot of experience using technology, but they lack the visual storytelling tools that are needed to be a filmmaker. I really enjoy combining these two aspects of the discipline with the productions we are doing at KidsEye. Our program is based on a learning-by-doing model. •

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