Producer shares tips with South Elgin filmmaking students

The 250 teens from Elgin Area School District U-46 who attend the BEACON media, television, film and broadcast news academy know they're aiming to get into a very competitive field and chances of career success are slim.

But as they received their own "Academy Awards" last week in a packed auditorium at South Elgin High School, they heard from a visiting Hollywood producer-writer-director - and from some of the academy's own first graduates - that, yes, success is not impossible.

It was the sixth such Oscar-style "awards" night, and it drew a standing-room-only crowd of some 750 people - the 250 academy students plus family, friends and many alumni of the magnet academy, which started accepting students in 2008 and turned out its first graduates in 2012.

Members of each of the current student body's 10 two-period-long classes received awards for best director-producer, best videographer, best content maker and best on-screen talent in their class, as voted by their fellow class members.

One "rock star" was also honored from each class, named by their teacher based on how well that student helped solve problems and worked with fellow class members as part of a team.

And students whose teams had produced videos that previously won awards from statewide or nationwide organizations also were recognized.

"Our first graduates are now ending their college years and getting out into the world," said Ben Erickson, who teaches the BEACON classes along with Tom Bozikis and Amanda Hayes.

One student who came back with a taste of real-world success was 21-year-old Samantha Kummerer of Bartlett. Since graduating from BEACON, she said before the ceremony, she has been studying at the University of Missouri School of Journalism on both the baccalaureate and graduate levels. As part of that, she landed an internship with Reuters news service at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

"I got to help cover a NATO summit," Kummerer said. "I was feet away from (German president) Angela Merkel. I was there when the terrorist bombing happened in Brussels and watched how Reuters covered it."

She also did an investigative reporting internship at NBC Chicago last year and works with Politico.

"A lot of the skills I had already learned at BEACON were taught in the college classes at Mizzou," she said.

She said she now hopes to get a full-time job in "data reporting - converting all those numbers that are available today into something that people can understand."

Expert advice

The guest speaker was Angelo Pizzo, who wrote and produced the much-honored Indiana-based sports dramas "Hoosiers" (1986) and "Rudy" (1993).

He told the students that to succeed in such an overcrowded field, they need to become like the real-life Notre Dame student portrayed by Sean Astin in "Rudy." Undersized and blessed with few athletic talents, yet fanatically determined to play on Notre Dame's football team, Rudy Ruettiger seemed to be "fundamentally incapable of hearing the word 'no,'" Pizzo said.

"You hear that 1,000 people a day get off the bus in Hollywood, hoping to get into the entertainment business," Pizzo said. "You'll hear a lot of no's. That's life, and that's especially life in a field that's very competitive. You have to hear those 'no's' without internalizing them."

Pizzo said the script he wrote for "Hoosiers" was rejected 200 or 300 times before he and his former Indiana University college roommate, director David Anspaugh, interested someone in financing it as a Hollywood film starring Gene Hackman.

"Both 'Hoosiers' and 'Rudy' often appear in the top five on lists of the best sports movies of all time," Erickson said. He said he shows "Hoosiers" when he teaches BEACON students about genre filmmaking.

Erickson said he became curious about who had made the movie. Finding Pizzo named on the Internet Movie Database as its writer and producer, and that Pizzo had been born in Chicago, Erickson then discovered Pizzo had a Facebook page.

"I sent him a message asking if he would be interested in visiting our academy and he answered me right away," the teacher said.

Bozikis said that as part of their BEACON studies, his students this year made TV commercials for 15 area businesses. Those included a catering company, a car detailing firm, Bartlett Hills Golf Club and several restaurants.

"We did one for a lady who does spray tanning," Bozikis said. "She put the video on Facebook and it got 7,000 views in a week."

Pizzo urged the young would-be media people not to give up.

"Whatever you do, do it with passion," he said. "My father asked me, 'What do you love?" I said I love movies but I don't know how to make a career in that. He said, 'Then figure it out because that's what you need to do.

"But I was 33 years old before I wrote my first screenplay."