NH Filmmaker of the Year talks collaboration, creativity
Published: 10-27-2024 2:09 PM |
Ian Scura started experimenting with a camera in elementary school. Using his older brother’s equipment, he created stop-motion videos with Legos and toyed around with other film projects with friends.
“I just grew up loving using the medium of film to tell stories,” said Scura, who was raised in Concord. “As I grew up, I fell in and out of making videos, sometimes really cool projects and things. It wasn’t always present, but it was always just in the background.”
He studied film at Middlebury College in Vermont before returning to Concord to work at Windwood Productions, where he now serves as the assistant creative director.
At the New Hampshire Film Festival earlier this month, Scura won the title of Filmmaker of the Year for his work directing the feature film “A Handmade Life” and the short film “Liquid, Fragile, Perishable.” Both films made their premiere at the festival, which ran from Oct. 17-20 in Portsmouth.
Scura, alongside the team he works with at Windwood Productions, created “A Handmade Life” as an exploration into local creativity. The film follows 10 members of the League of NH Craftsmen and explores their work and their lives.
“We try our best to tell the stories but to also use the filmmaking medium to give you a glimpse into what it is like to be an artist in the greater New Hampshire area, and, through audio and the visuals, try to show you what their process is like, because each medium is different from each other, while also showing how each of these artists expresses themselves creatively.”
Scura’s other film, “Liquid, Fragile, Perishable” stemmed from his mother’s tradition of baking hundreds of cookies every holiday season and mailing them to family and friends. Alongside his brother and co-director Ryan Scura and their childhood friend, Dylan Ladds, he made the short film to delve into his mother’s yearly process and what the baking endeavor means to her.
“In talking to her we learned how connected that was to family and family traditions, and finding ways to show your love and care for the people that are important to you,” Scura said. “It just ended up being a much more special process than I think we realized and it told much more of a story just about family and how doing this can express how you feel about someone and help carry on these traditions.”
Article continues after...
Yesterday's Most Read Articles
The Monitor spoke with Scura about his creative process after he won Filmmaker of the Year.
Q: What does filmmaking mean to you?
A: Filmmaking is unlike a lot of art mediums. I think when people think of an artist, they might think of someone alone in a studio, working on an art piece. I think of filmmaking as an art form, but it is a lot more collaborative. I did not work on either of the films I made for this year alone.
What’s so fun to me about that process, and what’s so special to me about being able to highlight both of the films I worked on with the groups of people I worked with, is that it’s a collaborative medium. This isn’t just my story. None of these are my stories. They’re collectively the stories of the people they’re about. And they’re also collectively, partially, the stories of the people that are trying to tell them.
Especially in documentary filmmaking, you are getting to spend time with people and get glimpses into their lives. Instead of being alone in the studio. I’m out in places with real people, talking to them, with them, or just shadowing them as they do something that they love and trying to understand it or capture it as best I can to show people what their lives are like.
Q: Where do you draw inspiration from?
A: I’m learning a lot from the people around me, whether it’s the subjects of what I’m filming, or whether it’s the people I’m working with to brainstorm those ideas. I think oftentimes I’ll get inspiration for things just by trying to spend some time reflecting on the things around me. Like with the film about my mom, that came from reflecting on our childhood and thinking about this tradition that our mom had and looking at that from more of an outside perspective.
My inspiration comes from just trying to look at the people and things around me and see how special they are, and then doing the best I can to brainstorm how you could portray that in a way that captures some of how special that is, and just doing our best to put ourselves in a position to show a glimpse into what that person’s story is like.
Q: How did it feel to win NH Filmmaker of the Year?
A: I’m very appreciative. I think it speaks a lot to the people that I worked with as well and all the hard work they put in. This is very, very much a team effort. We got to profile and show and tell people’s stories. It is almost just as valuable to me that someone is willing to come up to me after a screening and share a story about their family, or relative and how our story made them think of that person than it is to win any specific award for making these films.
Q: What do you hope people will take away from your work?
A: In general, for anything I make, I hope people will try to find some connection to a story that I tell or something in their life and also use that to think about the intricacies or the special nature of anything their lives that you might not initially think about.
With “A Handmade Life” and telling the stories of these craftspeople, I do hope that people will come away appreciating how difficult it is to make some of the work that each of these individuals do, the time and effort that goes into it. With my mom’s story, I hope people appreciate the special nature that can exist in family traditions, and putting care and thought into the things that you make for people.
Rachel Wachman can be reached at rwachman@cmonitor.com