Spotlight on...Kelsey Eichhorn '08

Author: Melissa Marshall

Dressed in a cozy fleece and exuding an even warmer demeanor, Kelsey Eichhorn '08 does not fit the picture of a hot shot director, but she has the credentials. Her film, "What I Do Has to be Great" won Best Documentary by a Student and Overall Best Student Film at this year's Vermont Film Festival in Burlington. The senior Film and Media Culture major was supposed to do a cultural documentary based on her semester abroad in Norway but changed her topic completely on her return, allowing herself only two months to come up with a new project. Eichhorn spoke with The Middlebury Campus about the challenges and rewards of creating her 500 level independent film work on dairy farmer John Putnam '79.

The Middlebury Campus: What do you hope viewers will take away from "What I Do Has to be Great?" Did you have a specific message in mind during filming?
Kelsey Eichhorn: The story really struck me because it's off the beaten path. John Putnam was originally a lawyer, but one day he looked at his boss, and was like, "That's not what I want to be when I'm 65." So he went to Switzerland, got a copper vat custom-made, bought a farm in Vermont and started making cheese. This theme of an alternative route is one that's emerging in my film work. There's this whole societal plan where people expect you to do certain things with an education from somewhere like Middlebury, and the idea of forsaking that and doing what you have to do to be happy is really interesting to me. When I start making a film, I definitely have a target audience in mind - someone that I'm speaking to. And that doesn't mean that the film won't appeal to someone outside of that, but there's always some kind of message that I'm trying to get through. I don't want to beat people over the head with it - it's not supposed to be didactic, but it is supposed to make people think. If I can have people leave the theater thinking, then I've done my job.

TC: What was the biggest obstacle in terms of the creation of the film? Did you struggle more with the productional aspects or with the construction of thematic elements?
KE: The weather didn't really cooperate last spring - it snowed late into the season, and I had to drive an hour and half through the Green Mountains. Travel and all the logistics of production were difficult, and I ended up having a lot less time to edit than I would have liked. But at the same time, the biggest challenge, if I had to choose one, was getting that message across. I knew why I was attracted to the story. It was because of the idea of being strong enough to make the choices that will make you happy, and not judging your own success against outside influences. It's about making success a personal thing rather than a public thing. And that really appealed to me, but it took me a long time to be able to articulate that. I was having difficulty structuring the film to convey that message. I ended up actually adding an inter-monologue piece to it. It's a biographical documentary in its simplest form, but then it's broken up by an inter-monologue poem of sorts. It tries to take the topic of cheese making and those decisions that John made throughout his life and really present them as decisions that we can all make as well. We can all say that we don't have to do what's expected, we can go our own way if it makes us happy.
TC: How do students get their work to film festivals? KE: It's usually instigated by the professors. In terms of film festivals in general, the film department has a whole book of places where you can send your films too. I just got an e-mail from one of the professors asking me to send a copy of my work from last year. I actually didn't get to go to the festival - it was family weekend, my family was here, and I was taking them on a tour. I was just kinda like, "I probably won't win - my film's probably just filler." I just put it on the backburner. And then I got an e-mail Saturday morning, and I was absolutely floored.

TC: What were the greatest challenges that you faced as a student director?
KE: In terms of challenges and insecurities, doing film at a liberal arts school is always difficult - applying for internships over the summer is especially difficult. You're competing with students who are going to NYU film school - students who are graduating from Tisch School for the Arts. Those are the places where major Hollywood directors and producers come from. And we're in the middle of Vermont with a department that has roughly 22 senior majors and minors. We're small, we take an alternative route and I love it. I think it gives me a really good, rounded view of the industry, but at the same time I don't feel as comfortable in the production, technical aspects of it. For me, I make the films because I want them to be good, I want to send a message across, I want to do justice to my subjects, but at the same time it's more of an exercise for myself because I need the experience to be able to go out into the film industry. That's why I never really expected to win - I looked at it more as a learning process for me.

TC: So is this a career path you would like to continue?
KE: Definitely. I did an internship this summer with Barbara Kopple. She just did the Dixie Chicks documentary a couple of years ago and she's won a couple of Oscars - she's really well known. I did some editing stuff for her, and I actually was assistant editor for a documentary that's on the Disney Channel right now titled "The Music in You." It documents a bunch of kids in Texas doing "High School Musical" as their high school musical. I am going back to Cabin Creek Film in New York City after I graduate, I think. It's really difficult to get into the industry right now, and the fact that I got an offer to get back there is amazing. It's really nice security. Even though I don't have all the technical knowledge that someone from NYU may have, I can talk comfortably about film and directors - I know the history, I know the philosophy behind it.