Photo credit: Courtesy of Deaf Film Camp
“It would be nice for him to be involved with us,” said Stacy Lawrence referring to Pharrell Williams, a huge winner at the 56th GRAMMYS whose recording HAPPY is the focus of a widely popular music video produced at Camp Mark Seven’s Deaf Film Camp that benefited from the singer’s GRAMMY wins.
“We definitely welcome the opportunity for the involvement, absolutely. Very welcome, bring it on.”
BE HAPPY: Pharrell’s “Happy” in ASL by Deaf Film Camp at CM7
Lawrence is the founder of the camp, a two-week summer experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing teens looking to pursue a filmmaking career. “I’ve always wanted to start this deaf camp and the reason is because I’ve always wanted to be in films and make films, so I felt like it was time,” she explained. “It really actually stems from one of my experiences as an ex-director of a deaf film festival, The Rochester Film Festival here in New York. We live in a very, very, very driving deaf community here. We want to welcome people and show people what we do and who we are. This town has always been so very supportive of the film festival.”
Stacy Lawrence
“There are a lot of films from deaf filmmakers out there that are really, really good; but here for us, the absolute ultimate goal to keep in mind is the film camp……creating a new wave, if you will, for the young filmmakers, up and coming. We have the campers learn how to shoot film and then they learn how to edit and cut and then we put the film together,” she told Hollywood on the Potomac. “We divided them into four teams. Each team was required to make three different projects that they were assigned to work on, in addition to the music video. We taught them how to use the props and things like that, how to create a story…… how you work with your main character and then how you have your Happy main character. Basically, going back into the theme of the music Happy and all of that, trying to go into that segment. But yeah, we had a great team, great teachers, it was just phenomenal. We worked really hard for all the kids.
This is a two year old program. We are still trying to grow and mature in our program, that’s definitely the goal. We have four instructors from last summer who were from South Africa, England, some from Australia. They really wanted to bring their children from their own countries. Of course, we welcome these deaf kids from all corners of the globe. And we want to make this film camp become the model, if you will, going forward.”
Wayne Betts, Instructor
“Indeed, we have some challenges of course,” she added. “but we have the same shared common goal to make films for a broader audience, not just the deaf community and we want to be able to provide our deaf campers that wonderful, fabulous experience because most of them come from hearing families. The hearing people are a part of this wonderful family that we’ve created. All the instructors for the camp are deaf, all of them. Because their teachers and their instructors were deaf, that was the role model that they had.
Our mission is to empower campers with the ability to tell stories on film by providing access to state-of-the-art equipment and the guidance of experienced filmmakers while providing a fun-filled summer experience that can transport them beyond their everyday lives.”
“I know Stacy through the Rochester Deaf Film Festival,” Wayne Betts told us, “where my movie was shown. Then last year she approached me and presented me with the idea of why not setting up a deaf film camp with 2 purposes in mind: The first would be to get all of the deaf professional movie makers, makeup artists, videographers, editors, all together in the same location from all over the world, in one place which is very, very rare to see happen and additionally, give the young students the opportunity and experience to perform and interact with professional film makers. For me, it was definitely an easy decision to say yes. Now this is the second summer that we had this program.”
“I only knew one cinematographer who was deaf when I was growing up…… that’s Peter Wolf. There were few other deaf movie makers at that time and those people were pioneers and they really, really worked hard to break into the industry. Generally, one deaf person alone in a mainstream film environment are the folks that I really look up to. Compared with today, we’ve seen a lot of changes. As a result of their inspiration and their peers, now we have teams where you have all deaf production crews who are responsible for making the movie. Kids today at the camp have a really different experience than I had when I was growing up.,” he told us.
“Before camp started, I knew for a fact that there might have been 3 or 4 students who told me that they wanted to become filmmakers,” Betts added. “Now after the film camp occurred, I know that there are more students who are going to decide to make a career path out of this because people approached me while I was at the camp. When I was in high school, I already knew that I wanted to make films. There were teachers and staff and other adults around me who said, ‘you know I’m not really sure this is viable for you.’ ‘How are you going to earn money? How are going to make a career out of this industry?'”
“They encouraged me to focus on teaching or something that deaf people could do, so to speak,” Betts noted. “Nowadays, obviously, you can make a career out of this and I have my own company, Convo Communications. I run marketing,……videography, graphic design, and there are a lot of peers out there who have professional jobs in the industry, in all of these realms. The industry really has become very integrated and it’s very easy to get a job in this. Now the kids who were at camp, I see this spark, the light, going on within them and for them to start seeing this as something that really could be done in their own lives and where they could use their creativity and their motivation to really make a career for themselves – that impact in giving kids the opportunity is really phenomenal.”
The campers: “I learned a lot of things like filming, acting, makeup, editing, scriptwriting, directing, and much more! Hopefully I will go back next year,” Anna Wood Jacobowitz told us. “I will continue to use the tips I learned at the camp in my own work and other film projects for school. I am already involved in film projects like the the Riverside California School for the Deaf film competition and I will use some of the skills I learned at Camp Mark Seven, especially the zoom in and editing work. I’m also working on projects at school at The Maryland School for the Deaf and my own projects.” Anna is a sophomore at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, MD.
Mark Seven’s Deaf Film Camp thanks their sponsors:
