Whitman students train lens on TV pilot

News Release Date:
Friday, Jan 25, 2008

“If every sin has its price, it helps if you can afford it.” Such is the wry practical advice in a new television pilot that is being written, produced and directed by Whitman students Kim Wetter ’08 and Ben Kegan ’09.

Ben Keegan (left), Robert Sickels and Kim Wetter

The producers: Ben Kegan (left), Robert Sickels and Kim Wetter

Wetter and Kegan are in the midst of a year-long independent television project under the supervision of Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Film Studies Robert Sickels. “It’s something new,” said Sickels. “These are exceptional students.”

Sickels suggested the study project last year. “It’s a good way to keep the learning process going,” Kegan said. He and Wetter had completed Sickels’ “Advanced Film” class, and both of their documentaries for the course — Kegan’s study of teen homelessness in rural areas and Wetter’s examination of the Web site Facebook — were screened at the Dayton Arts Festival.

“Kim and Ben have taken all the film classes and done everything available to them under the current rubric,” Sickels said. “They needed something else. They’re both extraordinarily interested in television, and so am I.”

“The television project is really perfect,” Wetter said. “It’s what we want to do with the rest of our lives.”

“This is really characteristic of students’ relationship with professors here,” Kegan added. “[Sickels] pushes us in new ways.”

Sickels, too, is a producer in the project. Wetter and Kegan pitched both the show and pilot episode to him, and got the go-ahead for production. “It’s as close to the professional process as possible,” Kegan said.

In the pilot, a protagonist named Sam, who comes from poor circumstances, is “cast from one world into another” when she enrolls at an East Coast boarding school. “The story looks at the way in which everyone — students, faculty, parents — has a secret and faces pressure,” Wetter said.

“It’s a dramedy — Charlotte Brontë meets Dawson’s Creek,” Kegan said of the 30-minute production. “We’re trying to take a different route. There are elements of serials and drama, but we’re making it smarter, darker. It’s something that’s pleasurable but that you’re proud to watch.”

Fall semester was devoted to research and pre-production. Wetter and Kegan will film and edit the project this semester. “We’ll need a lot of people to help out — actors, prop makers, set designers, crew, everyone,” said Wetter. “We’ll need a lot of favors.”

Some of the episode will be shot on Whitman’s campus, which will be made to look like a boarding school. “It won’t look like the Whitman you know,” Kegan allowed.

Kegan and Wetter met and worked together in Theatre Sports, an improvisational comedy group on campus. The experience was a great help in writing their TV script.

“In improv, there’s the [custom] of saying ‘Yes, and…’ to your partner, so you build on their ideas,” said Wetter. “That was helpful.”

Both Wetter and Kegan are Rhetoric and Film Studies majors with eyes on a career in television. Wetter plans to move to Los Angeles sometime after graduation to pursue her dream of creating and producing her own TV program. Kegan, a junior who made short films throughout his high-school career, also wants to work on the creative side of TV.

“Our futures should be something we’re passionate about,” Wetter said. “And you have to be passionate, or crazy, to want to work in television.”

In Wetter’s absence, Kegan will likely press on with the advertising element of their project. “I’ll look at how to sell a pilot,” he said. “You don’t just send it out in an envelope and hope to hear back. There are press kits, for example.”

Kegan plans to submit the pilot episode to several festivals. “We want the project to have life beyond the Whitman community,” he said. “Whitman students will certainly enjoy it, but our goal is to have people forget that students made it, as if they’re just sitting down at their couch on a Wednesday night to watch TV.”

— Katie Combs ’08

CONTACT:
Keith Raether
Office of Communications
Whitman College
509-527-4917
raethekr@whitman.edu