What began as a childhood interest in photography has led Golnar Fakhrai, a Cal State Long Beach senior, to an honor from the American Society of Cinematographers.
Fakhrai’s role as cinematographer in the award-winning student film “Half” has earned her runner-up for the ASC Burton Stone Heritage Award.
“I was overwhelmed. I was incredibly excited,” said Fakhrai, a film and video production major. “I was not expecting them to choose my film.”
Fakhrai is only the third female to receive this honor in the past 23 ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards competitions, as well as the first person ever from CSULB.
Heritage Award submissions were judged by a jury of ASC members. Applicants have to either be college seniors or recent graduates and must include a written recommendation from a film chair, dean or instructor. The award is rededicated each year to a different film industry professional.
The production of “Half” was originally a group project for professor Patrick Ford’s beginning film and video production class in spring 2008. Fakhrai, as well her fellow group members, faced criticism about the potential success of their film.
“The project that we did, it was supposed to just be a project. They kind of set it up so that you will fail,” Fakhrai said. “They really want it to just be about learning a lesson. Most people go into this [project] with too many pages and with too many locations [for the one-day time constraint].”
Professor Ford was one of many professors in the film department who helped Fakhrai overcome any discouragement. She noted that her decision in obtaining a degree in film and video production was a result of encouragement from her cinematography instructors at CSULB.
“Every teacher I’ve had in the cinematography track has been incredibly helpful, positive and wanted us to succeed,” Fakhrai said. Fakhrai’s confidence as a cinematographer has flourished due in large part to the positive feedback she has been given during classes, she said.
“Half” is about a student filmmaker who has just graduated from film school and is working on his first feature film, but everything is going wrong. The film is in Italian and has a visual aesthetic mimicking that of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. The writer, producer and director of “Half,” Drue Metz, based the film around one of Fellini’s 1963 films, titled “Eight and a Half.”
With only one day to shoot the film, Fakhrai, Metz and the other group members encountered many of the problems their main character was troubled with, including lack of time, lack of money and even lack of equipment.
A portion of the film is shot in a Long Beach church. In order to stay true to Fakhrai’s vision of having the sun pour through the large stained-glass windows, the team was forced to shoot part of the film inside first. Although this may seem like a small aspect to the film, the visual aesthetic is the main focus of the cinematographer and it is what Fakhrai is being honored for.
The assignment allowed for one 12-hour shooting period, a limitation that proved troublesome for Fakhrai and her team. As filming progressed and time ran out, Fakhrai and Metz realized they were going to be forced to cut a portion of the script.
“Luckily I knew my script and I knew what I wanted to say, and I was able to cut the first act from the original screenplay,” Metz said.
After graduation, Fakhrai plans to pursue on-set experience and wants to take a year or two to work in the industry before applying to USC, UCLA, NYU and University of Texas for graduate school.