The personal Website of Andy Schön of New York. Now in its 16th year on the Web.
After I finished my Master's Degree in Computer Science in 2003, I immediately turned my learning energy temporarily towards satisfying my long-pent interest in filmmaking. I took a screenwriting class at Gotham Writers' Workshop and a Cinema Studies class at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, the #1 film school in the world. Then I took five weeks off from my day job, between apartment leases, and temporarily moved to Hollywood to do a five-week, full-time digital filmmaking program at New York Film Academy's Universal Studios campus. There I had my classes in the same building that Steven Spielberg was also working in at the time. And I made films on the actual live Universal Studios sets (not the amusement park ones :).
Filmmaking
I began video editing for fun at some point in my teens, in the medium of the day - VHS. Although I was certainly interested in science and technical things as long as I can remember, I was fascinated early on with the magical creative opportunities that emerging home video editing abilities offered as well. I used two VHS VCR's rigged together to edit up sequences that I would script for my friends and I to act out. During undergrad, I took one class in which I did some more video editing and produced a short film worth watching, "The Night the Lights Went Out at RPI."
| Hatch Screenings | ||
| Date | Location | City |
| 05 Sep 2003 | NYFA@Universal Studios | Universal City, CA |
| 11 Oct 2003 | WESTfest 2003 Short Film+Video Festival | Abilene, TX |
| 01 Mar 2004 | B-Movie Theater Film Fest | Syracuse, NY |
| 25 Apr 2004 | Tambay Film and Video Festival | Tampa, FL |
In the year after grad school, 2003-2004, I spent the most time on filmmaking to date. During my NYFA class at Universal Studios, I made the artistic short film, "Hatch", which was not only worth watching, it was also selected for several film festivals in various cities that I toured around the country, and was nominated for two awards. Hatch was made on MiniDV, posed the question, "Which came last, the chicken or the egg?" and was inspired by David Lynch's early shorts and Matt Smith's "The Provider". I'm listed on IMDB for Hatch.
The awards that Hatch was nominated for were "Best Student Film" at Tambay and "Best Short Film" at B-Movie Theater. I also worked with a friend during this time on a film called "Destination: Destin" that has to date not yet been finished. My filmmaking hobby dwindled as I spent my time next on traveling and increasingly chose to do still photography rather than digital filmmaking.
In 2008, I did release a short post-production piece on YouTube from footage I had shot during the Serengeti Migration in Tanzania in 2007, called "Daft Zebra".
Andyland Pictures, Inc.
Also in the year after grad school, I formalized my filmmaking work by legally incorporating "Andyland Pictures, Inc." - the name I chose for my film production company - as an experiment both in exploring my filmmaking interest as well as in teaching myself corporate law, finance, and taxation.
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However, as my filmmaking hobby dwindled in favor of my time being spent more on traveling and photography, I ended up using this entity mostly just for producing the DVD's of seven middle school plays at Little Red Schoolhouse / Elisabeth Irwin High School in 2005-2006 and at some point I dissolved the corporation.
Favorite Films &
Name Dropping
My film watching hobby hasn't wavered nearly as much as my filmmaking hobby. As I write this in June 2009, I have rated 851 films on IMDB, and I've given 51 of them a full 10 out of 10. I guess until I make an effort to somehow rank within these 50, they are all tied as my favorite movie of all time. They are listed to the right.
I've had the pleasure of meeting some of my favorite directors, such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Michel Gondry, Charlie Kauffman, Jean-PIerre Juenet, Werner Herzog, and Alejandro González Iñárritu. I've also met other directors such as Steven Soderbergh, Guillermo del Toro, Peter Hedges, Michael Moore, and actors such as Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.