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That she is among the eight outstanding young filmmakers in the U.S. to win the coveted 2005 Princess Grace Foundation Award puts her in other good company, too. At the star- studded, royalty- rich event, she joined other award recipients whom she describes as "amazingly talented, intelligent, and kind," fellow student filmmakers who celebrated this larger than life award experience with her until the "wee hours of the morning." Karen's description of the other filmmakers could well be used to describe her. After receiving a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, she set up a studio and began showing in juried exhibitions, selling work, and receiving several awards, including a Partners of the Americas Travel Grant for an exhibition of her paintings in Brazil. She painted, sculpted, did performance art, and even joined a rock band for a few years before she realized she wanted to tell stories and felt that filmmaking would allow her to do so. As an M.F.A. candidate in film and media arts at Temple University, Karen produced four short films for which she received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in both filmmaking and screenwriting. She will use the $15,000 Princess Grace Foundation Award to pay for the production of her thesis film, Sarah and Dee, which was filmed in August.
Although Karen had already won the award at the time of filming Sarah and Dee, she had yet to receive the award money. She paid for the film on credit "knowing that the money to pay for it would show up eventually." Winning the award," she explained, "changed my approach in that I could relax a bit and not worry so much about how much film we were using but rather just try to get as much coverage as we could." She saw filming Sarah and Dee as an opportunity to "work as creatively as possible and allow the crew to learn and grow as much as I [did]." Previous to filming her thesis film, Karen had only worked with a crew of up to three people. On Sarah and Dee she was working with a crew of twenty to twenty-five. She said filming Sarah and Dee, " was a huge step for me. So we took as much time as we could to try out new things-you should have seen some of our car rigs!" Initially, her art background influenced her filmmaking "almost too much at times." She described her early approach to filmmaking where she "treated the film frame as a canvas that remained stationary within which all the action would take place. It felt familiar and easy to work this way. It's only with my latest film that I have really tried to move the camera and generate meaning through the movement." Karen, especially attracted to films of the seventies like The Last Picture Show, Midnight Cowboy, and Five Easy Pieces, said these films "have the ability to reflect the overwhelming social concerns of the time within the more intimate, personal stories of the film. " This is a theme that also seems to be reflected in Sarah and Dee, "a story that revolves around two young house cleaners who struggle with universal concepts of class, immorality and destiny as their job takes them out of their working-class neighborhood and into the wealthy suburbs." Even with an impressive history of achievements behind her, Karen was still surprised to win the Princess Grace Foundation Award. Thinking the award was a long shot, Karen focused on an application package that represented her style rather than what she thought might appeal to a jury. She included a short, Twenty Questions (2003, 11 min, mini dv) because it showcased her writing and choice of subject matter. To highlight her skills as a director and cinematographer, she also included her short film, My Scarlet Letter (2004, 10 min, 35 mm, shot on S-16) which had been selected as the Best Graduate Student Film by the 2004 Hamptons International Film Festival and has been screened internationally, including at the 22nd Torino Film Festival. "You could see that I had vastly improved my filmmaking skills from one to the other but you could also see that my approach to storytelling and characterization were similar in style in both films," she said. Karen thinks what made her application stand out was a compilation DVD of her work and a booklet that contained the materials like a budget and synopsis of Sarah and Dee. She also included "head shots of the actresses, images that addressed the visual style, and short essays that further explained her concept of the film." Taking a practical tack, she reasoned she was going to shoot the film no matter what, so thinking about and gathering those materials for the application helped her prepare for the shoot. The Princess Grace award, she said, encourages her to "keep moving ahead, to take chances, and trust that boldness will be rewarded." Before film school, Karen worked on several professional productions but feels her opportunity to learn the filmmaking business was limited because of the hierarchy and departmental separation and isolation she observed on the set. Film school, she said, provided her "with all the tools to make a film--equipment, time, guidance-- and there were no excuses I could make for the work. The quality of my films would rely solely on my talent and abilities." Making it a point to take a class from almost every professor in her department at Temple, Karen has nothing but good things to say about the faculty who have mentored her along the way. She praises the instruction she received from Prof. Warren Bass, Prof. Eran Preis, and Prof. LeaAnn Erickson. She profoundly felt the influence of Prof. Jeff Rush whom she describes as brilliant. She said, "the material I wrote in his class is quite distinct from the writing before, and it has become a real problem in that it exists within the same script. I have lots of rewriting to do." "The biggest reward of being in film school is that it has allowed me the luxury to think about filmmaking every day," she said. The biggest challenge of film school has been "stepping up and taking responsibility for my dreams about becoming a filmmaker," she added. Her advice to other film school students? "Work hard and persevere," a formula that certainly seems to have worked for Karen. Karen Dee Carpenter is generous in her appreciation for the support she has received and the opportunity that the Princess Grace Foundation Award provides. She said, "I feel extremely grateful for all of the generosity, kindness, and belief that people have shown towards me and my work, and I hope to continue making films that engender that kind of support." Thinking back to the award ceremony with the movie legends, royalty, and fellow award recipients, she said, "it felt like the right place to be, and I hope to find myself in that kind of crowd over and over again." No doubt she will find herself in that good company again. The Princess Grace Foundation was founded in 1982 by the late H.S. H. Prince Rainier III of Monaco as a tribute to his wife, former American actress Grace Kelly, who helped many young artists pursue their career goals. The over 400 million dollars in grants, which range from $5,000 to $25,000, have been awarded to over four hundred emerging artists in theater, dance and film. http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/students/beat/nov2005/temple.jhtml?id=0.1.4.5&lc=en |
