URI senior shares conjoined love for writing and film

First semester senior, John Conboy, has high hopes of creating a path with both of his passions, writing and film.

Currently enrolled at the University of Rhode Island as a double major in Film and Writing & Rhetoric, Conboy plans to graduate in December 2016. Since coming to URI, Conboy always felt that studying film seemed like the natural choice, as he has always been fascinated with film and movies.

“Space Jam!” Conboy confidently retorted when I asked him what his favorite childhood movie was. “It was Space Jam for sure. I was a cool kid. I was fly.”

As he started getting deeper into the major, he realized he enjoyed the writing aspect just as much, leading him to pursue a degree in writing as well.

“It would be fun to be a director but there is so much unwanted pressure. I’d much rather do more writing, script writing,” Conboy said.

So far, Conboy has thoroughly enjoyed all his film courses at URI, having nothing but positive remarks regarding film, his courses, and his personal projects. He assiduously elucidates how there are two different concepts of courses: Production and Theory. Production courses are usually four hours per week where you have a small group that focuses on learning the equipment then going out and producing with that equipment.

Theory courses focus solely on film history, script analysis, old movies, and the conceptual influences behind the movies. These courses also require significant time commitments, which undoubtedly contribute to a serious understanding of the material.

“I like them both equally,” Conboy said. “You need to understand theory to understand filming. He continued by describing how he feels he as a film major is very lucky.”

“We really have good faculty here,” Conboy said.  “Everyone is beyond willing to help you with everything, especially here in the HUB. Someone is always here to answer you if you have any questions.” 

According to Conboy, classes in the film department give you a lot of freedom. In the case of Film 351, he produced the short film “You and I”, which happened to be his favorite film he has produced.

He then expressed how difficult the process is for shooting film and the multi-step process, which includes writing the script or storyboard, creating a tedious shot list, and then gathering the people for both in front of and behind the camera.

“Something always goes wrong, so it always takes forever mainly because no one is getting paid and they are student films,” Conboy stated. “Editing also takes a lot of time.”

Despite the hard work, this is his favorite part because that’s where he feels he has the most control. He then went on and expressed how thrilled he is about the editing programs like Illustrator, Premiere and Final Cut that URI has to offer.

Overall, Conboy is more than thrilled to be enrolled as both a Film and Writing & Rhetoric major. Although he is unsure what he will do with both his degrees come next December, he has an idea of what path he would like to go down. His dream job would be a stunt man (one who doesn’t break their bones) however, he would settle for a job at an ad agency, as he believes “it has a good mix of filming and writing.”

“Anyone who does not know what to do should take a film class,” Conboy said. “You have to put a lot of time in and you get exhausted but it’s worth it; when you watch your own film it’s awesome!”

Conboy’s work can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCABLPIYOR9Arv_6uW3dO53A.