Sultan Sharrief

How did you get into ice carving?

I did ice carving in high school. We had culinary arts department and so the head chef started a team. So I was on the team for three years. We went to local competitions and things like that. It's funny because when the U of M spokesperson came to our school and he talked about how there were over 700 clubs and stuff, he said, and this always stuck with me, I was like, "Oh, is there an ice carving team?" and he's like, "No, but you can start one! If you have at least five people who are interested in doing it." I was a senior in high school then, so two years later, I ended up starting one. I started the Ice Carving Team four years ago and I sort of just finished up with that. I just think it's one of those cool things that's kind of random but everyone can appreciate it. Even if you aren't really good or the most talented person, it's something that you can still work on, still appreciate.

How long ago did you get started in film and what got you interested?

Well, I've made small films in classes, but the first big film that I made was this past summer and we worked on for pretty much two years, leading up to the summer. And we just finished it Thursday, we just screened at the Michigan Theater this past Thursday. So it was a little over two years in the making. I took a different route than most students take, in terms of filmmaking. I chose to work on several other people's projects instead of always trying to just direct my own, which a lot of people want to do. I felt I would rather learn as much as I could before I tried to take on my own project. So I was a producer for that one and my friend Jarrett Slavin was the writer and director. His family put up a lot of money so we were able to shoot it on 35mm, which is professional format, and we did the whole thing professionally. But again, we used a bunch of different students who were all studying different things. It wasn't just film majors, it was art students, theater students, music school students, business school students, and we all came together to make the film.

I am now working on another project which is going to be a class this spring. It's basically building off of the experience of the last film and it's going to be bringing students together to work on the film project and then we're going to shoot a feature film over the summer. So I'm still planning that now. We're doing fundraising and things like that.

Why did you choose film as your major?

Originally I was pre-med. I've always been into biology, but I've also always been a daydreamer. So somewhere around sophomore year I took a film class and it just really clicked with me. It sort of turned into the thing that I could put all of myself into. In my science classes I would always have to stop daydreaming about stuff and focus on science and film sort of allows you to be absent minded and be... creative, basically. But then there's also the get down to business side of it, too. That's kind of the person that I am so it just fit.

Do you find it difficult to balance the different arts that you do and your schoolwork?

...yes and no. The difficult part is prioritizing and that's just difficult in terms of forcing yourself to decide what's important to you and I've had classes that were necessary for requirements and things like that but I didn't feel like they were contributing directly to the work that I was doing. On the other side, I'd be making films outside of class or even doing ice carving. It is difficult for you to sit down and decide this is the most important thing for me to do this weekend. And then what happens is that you just have to choose which one takes the front seat and which one gets the back seat. That part of it is difficult but once you make that decision, and I was lucky to know where I stood in terms of it. I'm all about experiences so I feel like your real-world experiences are going to have just as much value as your in-class experiences so I always put in enough work in class, but I think I always value my out-of-class work just a little bit more.

Are you involved in any outside organizations that are related to your arts?

Well, I started a film production company and the last film we made was our first feature and so this next film is the... second one, I guess. It's called Beyond Blue Productions so even in the name, we're hinting at the connection between the University and independent work. Personally, that's what I want to go into. I mean, I like Hollywood and I might end up being there but at least for now, I'm really into students and working with student filmmakers or non-professionals and making film as art more than it just being a business-type thing. Even though I might fall into that later, when I start needing to pay off my bills, for now, that's what I really want to focus on.

What are your plans for after graduation?

I have no idea... no. At this point it's just to make this next film. This is really the first big film that I've worked on that is from me. I'm writing it and directing it. It'll be my first project in the past three years, because I stopped doing my work in junior year. So I'm really just going to put all my efforts into this project and then I'm kind of just stepping out on faith that this will lead to some other experience. From my experiences, that's what usually happens. I don't necessarily always have to plan too far ahead, so my planning ahead, is working on this project. I'll shoot it this summer and then start editing it. I've thought about moving to LA to try to sell my other film which is finished. Basically, it's just going to be following up with this film. I already know the story that I want to tell for my film after this one. So before I'm done working on this next project, I'll probably start writing and producing for the following film which will be based on my rugby experience, because I've been on the rugby team for four years. So I think that's ideally how the rest of my life will go. Finishing up one project and then starting another before I'm done with the [first] one, and planning for the third one. And then just kind of rolling like that.

Is there a particular aspect of filmmaking that you want to do?

Well, I'm really into smaller, more independent projects and I like to write and direct but if I found someone who had an original story that I believed in, then I would love to help them make that story come true by being a producer. So I basically write, direct, and produce. Which every filmmaker will probably tell you but... what can you do?

Are there any particular directors, producers, or films that influenced your decision to major in film or that influence you now?

One of the movies that has inspired me the most is a film called "Life is Beautiful." It's an Italian film about the Holocaust but more so about a man and his family. It's a beautiful film but it's hilarious at the same time and it's also tragic at the same time. It's moving and that really when I realized the power that cinema has to affect people. After you watch this film, you're in love with these people and you know a little bit more about their culture and what they were experiencing and what they went through. Also, documentaries like "Born into Brothels." There are lots of others. I like lots of foreign documentaries that capture the essence of a place through the people that they are representing. So I kind of would like to do that. Or even mixing documentaries with narrative. What I would like to do is have people go to a country and instead of necessarily making a documentary about a group there, actually giving them the camera so they can tell their own story and empower people through filmmaking.

How does your art add to your experience at U of M?

I don't know that I could separate the two. I've been on art councils since I was a freshman after the first month of school. My experience at U of M is through the arts, through my relation to the arts. Within our school are a lot of people who have a commitment to the arts whether it's an a cappella group or a mural club or an ice carving team. And there are always people there who are willing and interested to go the extra mile for the arts whereas I feel like at other universities that I've experienced first-hand, that's not always the case. So I definitely appreciate having a group like Arts at Michigan or UMS, things like that, whose sole purpose is make sure that, as students, we have access to the arts.

How much time did you put into making your film? Was it a constant process?

Yes. Making a film is one of the most complicated things; especially a big film. It was basically like taking another class for four semesters. And then, over the summer, it was like cramming a year into four weeks... I live by my planner and so in my planner, you'll see homework for classes and things and then like five other things to do constantly for the film. And so now I have five things for the old film and five things for the new film. But when we shot over the summer, pretty much my whole summer was twelve hours a day, six days a week. And we shot for four weeks and during that time it was sixteen hours a day for six days a week. Once we finished, it eased up a little bit. But it's just a whole lot of work.

Where do you get funding for all of this?

For the first film, the director's family put up the money. For the second one, which is why there's so much work, we're actually trying to fundraise and raise a lot of money. It's writing grants, looking for different places for fundraising, looking for discounts at places, writing up proposals and all this different kind of stuff like that.

What class would you recommend for someone thinking of going into film?

290 is a good one to start with. You can kind of get a feel for what you like. I prefer the film classes to video classes just because they're more work. I felt you're sort of forced to be a little more professional and that film is less forgiving than digital. I mean, if you have a video camera, you can shoot something and then look at it and know you got it. With film, you do it and it's in your camera and you do all this planning and lighting and trying to load the camera properly and then you shoot something and then you'd better hope that you did things right, or your film is going to come back and just be black. It requires a little bit more patience but I feel like for students, that patience was a good thing because really, that's the professional way to be, even if you are shooting digital. But I don't think a lot of students understand that, or at least not initially, so they just kind of treat it like, "Oh, I'm going to take this camera and go out and play and shoot some funny stuff that I think would be cool," as opposed to actually sitting down and planning things out the way you would have to do professionally.

That's another thing. The people you work with really... make or break your experience. I've had some horrible film classes, basically because I got put into a bad group and you can't make a film by yourself. A film is inherently sort of a community based thing because you're going to have a producer, a director, a cinematographer, a caterer and all these things. So when you're in a small group of students, those things get buried into three people. So each one of you is really doing the job for, like, five people or ten people normally. So if one of them, or two of them, as I've had happen, don't do their job, then, if you want the film to happen, all the work falls onto one person and then you just get crushed. I got crushed one year when two group members (and I was in a group of three) decided they weren't going to show up for our last project, which I was directing and then it fell apart. I finished it but I had a girl from the ice carving team and a guy from the rugby team helping me and one of the kids from my dorm helping me because I was an RA, these were all my actors. So basically my actors were setting up the lights and doing all the stuff! The whole time, they were like, "Aren't you supposed to have a group of people doing this?" But that all really shows in your work. The film came out and it looked ok but it wasn't what I was going for and that's why I decided I would sort of hold off on trying to make my own stuff until I actually had the means to do so or the people to do so. So choose good classes but choose good people in the classes.