West Windsor resident and filmmaker Tim O’Connor was moved by “Tree Of Life,” the latest film by acclaimed director Terrence Malick starring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, which won the Palme d’Or this year at Cannes. Malick is a legendary figure in Hollywood, not only for having directed only six feature films in a four-decades-long career, most notably “Days of Heaven” and 20 years later, “The Thin Red Line,” but also for the painterly cinematography and unconventional editing of his films. O’Connor says both “Days of Heaven” and “The Thin Red Line” have been “a big influence” on him. But O’Connor is not yet sure if he likes Malick’s latest work.
“‘Tree of Life’ is bizarre, but worth seeing — it’s different from what I’ve seen before,” O’Connor says. “Malick is a god in my eyes, a very visual filmmaker, and this film is even more so than his previous movies. This one is a real experience. Malick is known to improvise, even throw scripts out the window, which is an interesting way of doing things.”
Malick is just one filmmaker and writer who has sparked O’Connor’s interest in the field. A rising senior at Vassar College in Poughkeepskie, NY, he has enjoyed showing his films at the Princeton Student Film and Video Festival, for three years running, and is screening two works at this year’s festival, which takes place on the evenings of Wednesday and Thursday, July 20 and July 21, at Princeton Public Library.
A lifelong resident of West Windsor, O’Connor says he has been interested in movies all his life, and made his first film at age 10, a stop-motion creation starring a set of Legos he got as a gift. He played around with filmmaking for years, but got serious about the craft while at High School North, from which he graduated in 2008.
O’Connor can’t say enough good things about the high school’s broadcast writing program, taught by Glenn Allison. “Though Mr. Allison generally likes to stay in the background, he was, without a doubt, an inspiration. A big goal of the program is that it’s entirely student-run. The program has had an enormous impact on me, and I definitely wouldn’t be where I am now without it.
“I spent four years in the program, which is a combination of learning about radio, television, and movies, and it was incredible, definitely the highlight of high school,” he says. “All of these fields — film, radio, journalism — inform each other, and learning the different technologies is helpful and useful for each.”
In addition to his involvement with the broadcast writing program, O’Connor enjoyed numerous activities at North, including Student Council, the Improv Club, and theater.
“The broadcast writing program also had an after-school club, and I spent a lot of time outside of school doing things related to that as well,” he says. “The student-run radio station took up most of the time.”
This is the third year O’Connor has had his work shown at the Princeton Student Film and Video Festival, and he will have two films screened. The first, “Gum Glut Morning,” written and directed by O’Connor, is a morality tale, where the one character has to make a decision about the direction of her life. The moody, rather European-styled short silent film was shot on a Bolex 16mm reflex camera, with Kodak Vision3 color negative film stock, technology that young filmmakers often don’t have access to.
“These cameras have a wild motor, hand cranked, which really is a throwback,” O’Connor says. “It’s amazing that the Vassar film department gives us access to this equipment. It would be expensive for (an independent filmmaker) to be able to use a camera like this. These cameras were developed for war photography in World War II, and ours are updated versions, but similar to those made in the ’40s and ’50s.”
O’Connor’s other film to be screened is “The Thing in the Lake,” a black and white silent short, which will delight fans of horror and suspense films of the ’40s and ’50s. Even the original soundtrack, by his friend, Ryan Shreves, has that spooky, expressionistic sound you would recognize in a certain retro genre of film.
“We were going for that over-the-top, not schlocky, but hyper-stylized feel,” O’Connor says. “The story is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories, not any one in particular, but that kind of vibe was the inspiration.
“For these films, because of the equipment, I was forced to make them silent, but my senior thesis project will be a 20-minute film with sync-sound, so there will be dialogue. There is a lot to be learned in telling a story without dialogue, though.”
O’Connor’s father, Bill, works in the finance department for the Medicines Company in Parsippany, and his mother, Maureen, is a nurse at High School South. O’Connor has three siblings: Michael, 20, a rising junior at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia; Shannon, 16, a rising senior at High School North; and Kathleen, 14, who will be a freshman at North.
Though he was learning the nuts and bolts of filmmaking in high school, O’Connor says he didn’t watch a lot of classics and foreign films until college, and hadn’t yet assembled a roster of influences. “I grew up watching ‘Star Wars.’ I must have watched it 100 times,” he says. “But in college I came to like American directors like John Ford and Sidney Lumet. Also foreign filmmakers like Fellini and Truffaut, and the German expressionists from the ’30s. In fact, ‘The Thing in the Lake’ was inspired by that era. Books and writers were just as big of an influence, and I was always reading as a kid, or being read to by my parents.”
Another recent film that sparked him is “Blue Valentine,” the 2010 romantic drama starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. It’s a bittersweet dose of reality for those considering a relationship, O’Connor says, “a real heavy hitter. The acting style in the movie is very immersive and improvisational. I like that it’s kind of the ‘new method’ style. It’s exciting that directors and actors are taking the film school aesthetic and bringing it to mainstream movies.”
The Princeton Student Film and Video Festival, now in its eighth year, is open to filmmakers age 14 to 24, including high school and college students, as well as students who are homeschooled or those done with school.
Susan Conlon, a West Windsor resident who is the teen services librarian and the festival’s coordinator, says the event has grown from just area high school students to a gathering of talented young filmmakers from the tri-state area. “One of the most important things about this festival is that the filmmakers are exploring, and it’s great to have people take interest in their work,” Conlon says. “This support might make a difference for them as far as their direction is going. It also gives them an incentive to grow their film from an idea and make it happen. We had 95 entries this year, and the entry process itself requires a lot of thought and creativity.
O’Connor highly recommends the festival for young filmmakers who are considering submitting their work. “It’s a welcoming place for new people,” he says. “I’ve been involved there for three years, and it’s been a great experience each time. It’s a really nice community and we’ve had great discussions.”
Princeton Student Film and Video Festival, Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Wednesday and Thursday, July 20 and 21, 7 p.m. Screening of original films created by high school and college students from the tri-state area. Free admission. The screenings are intended for a teen and adult audience. 609-924-8822 or www.princetonlibrary.org.
