Sense of Direction
It's a long way from the shadowy mountains of Transylvania to the sun-splashed beaches of the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, but one 2011 Moniteau High School graduate will make that journey this spring.
Bethany Barich, a Point Park University junior majoring in cinema production, will intern in the American Pavilion during the prestigious festival's run from May 10 through May 25.
But she will won't be traveling to stargaze. For her the festival offers a chance to network and make contacts in the industry.
Barich says it will be a great opportunity even if her internship duties are a little hazy at the moment.
“I had a friend last year apply through a different organization,” said Barich. “And I was very interested in that. I applied through the American Pavilion.”
“What they do is they have a pavilion on the beaches were everybody comes and socializes. They connect, they hold roundtable lectures,” she said.
“My job is unknown at the moment, I'll find out before I go. But I will be working at the tent they have set up. This will be an opportunity to network and make connections,” she said.
Barich, who will have to pay for her own plane ticket to Cannes and expenses once she gets there, believes the experience will be worth the cost.
“They're giving me access to all the screenings, lectures, roundtables. I'm going to have days scheduled for work, but when I'm not I'm going to have access to everything,” she said.
It won't be Barich's first trip to Europe.
“I went to London and Paris last year with the school. It was a course offered,” she said.
“It was a quick two-week course in London and Paris. We met with production houses and people that could take us into the film world of both areas. It was very different from the United States,” Barich said.
She looks at her upcoming trip to Cannes as a way to “get my name out there since I graduate in a year.”
Barich said she is concentrating on film direction, which is a lot more complicated than sitting back in a chair and saying “Action!”“With stage directions you really only have to focus on characters' movement and where they move through stage. With film direction you have to be concerned with where cameras are going and where the actors are going and where the lights are going, things like that,” she said.Barich said, “As a director you are communicating your ideas to people. It depends on how prepared you are. The more prepared you are, the easier it will be to efficiently get things done.”She's put her knowledge to work making student films at Point Park.“There are tons of student productions. They get you behind the camera the second semester of your freshmen year and we make short 2- to 5-minute firms,” Barich said.“I recently did a 10-minute short film. I directed it. It's very hard to explain. It's about this dystopian world where art has been banned,” she said.Called “The Colourful Mind,” Barich said she was part of a crew of six that took the already written script and scouted locations and picked costumes and actors and shot the movie on a $2,000 budget.“We had three main actors and 10 to 15 extras,” she said.“We shot over two weekends, shot some parts downtown and some parts in Aliquippa,” she said.“It was definitely hard. Every film has down points and tons of high points. I enjoyed making it and learned so much,” she said.Barich traces her fascination with movies to when she was 12.“The cable channel, AMC, every October they have a monthlong movie marathon of just horror movies,” she said. “In the seventh grade, I remember watching 'Dracula' and just being taken aback with that and Bela Lugosi. I swooned over him.”“That got me interested in film history and that led to direction,” she said.“She's had an interest in movies since she was a little, since she was old enough to watch them on TV,” said her mother, Bonnie Barich. “She loved to go to the movies. She would go to the drive-in in Butler. She loved it.”Bonnie Barich and her husband, Chuck, moved from Slippery Rock to Port Orange, Fla., in 2013 when they retired.“When I graduate I would really like to stay in Pittsburgh and work on as many sets as I can and get as much experience as I can, ”Bethany Barich said.“I really only plan to stay for another year or two when I graduate. I really want to move out West,” she said, to Hollywood, of course.“It's a tough field to break into,” said Bonnie Barich. “That's why it's great that she is able to go to Cannes and meeting all the people there. It's a wonderful thing for her. It's the experience of a lifetime, for sure.”
