Corina Juliana is one of those friends that your friends keep telling you about. The people you love the most are insisting that you meet her; you’d have a lot to talk about. They say, or she’ll change the way you think about filmmaking.
Corina Juliana
When you first meet her, she’s definitely not what you expected. For weeks now you’ve had this very mythical cool older sibling from the movies stuck in your head, someone who’s going to strike you the moment she takes over the room. But that’s not who Corina is. Corina isn’t a myth, an idea, or a celebrity: she’s a person. She does her school work, pays her bills, and orders her coffee like the rest of us. She’s just a fellow hardworking SCAD student, who happens to be working on some really cool and important stuff.
Corina: I’m a SCAD Student, I’m in junior year and I major in film and television, with a minor in production and also motion media graphics. I have a twin brother, which is kind of a cool fact. I’m from New York City, so Savannah’s kind of a big change for me, but I wanted to slow things down a bit and just have a change of pace for a while. I started FemFilm.
Jay: So, tell me, what is FemFilm? Describe it to me.
Corina: FemFilm is a Facebook group made specifically for women in film to create their own teams that are supportive. I just wanted to create a positive community, because a lot of film sets are kind of toxic or they can be at least. Not to say that FemFilm excludes men, in fact, I welcome men, but I just need to make sure that any men that do join the group are respectful of women and don’t put them down in any way. Just being respectful of their power, voice and creative minds.
Jay: You mentioned “toxic” film sets, can you talk a bit more about what sorts of issues you’ve come across on film sets? Anything that you wanted to alter?
Corina: There was this one specific film set that I was on last year that really brought this issue to my attention. I’ve heard from other people that there were issues, but I’d never really experienced much myself, and I hadn’t really been on a ton of sets yet. But this one particular set had a ton of problems, the producers were women and the directors and DPs were men, and there was a lot of butting heads…One of the producers that I was working at the time got sick, but she went to set anyway to help set everything up, and this one DP wouldn’t eat anything that she got, that she had already paid for.
So, he demanded that she go get pizza for him. I’d like you to keep in my mind that she was sick, like throwing up sick. She could barely drive and she had to go drive to get this…[Corina did her best to refrain from swearing at this moment] guy pizza! I don’t understand why he couldn’t just go get himself if he was going to be really picky, but from then on, she had to get him pizza before every set. It was just something so tiny but quite huge in retrospect; it was so disrespectful and not considerate at all and I was really blown away by that.
Jay: You’re a producer. I guess you’re running sets occasionally when you’re not busy being a student. What are some things that you’ve done to combat that type of disrespect?
Corina: Well I usually try to have primarily women run sets. I just feel more comfortable that way and I think that women should have a voice and they usually offer a lot to the projects, a lot of positive, creative thought. I want my sets to be inclusive of both men and women. We can accomplish great things if we learn to work together in healthy environments.
Jay: Do you have any final thoughts or things that you want people to takeaway about you as an artist or you as a person?
Corina: I really think a woman’s voice is just as important and just as creative. So, I really hope to create a platform for them to utilize and I’m really proud that people have started using this Facebook group. I really wasn’t sure if was going to end up being a dead Facebook group…but people are actually Femme Film and I’m so proud. Hopefully one day I can join or start a production company mainly run by women; I know that Reese Witherspoon has like two now but they’re still really small. But I think we’re in a new era where this kind of thing is becoming more popular and hopefully it continues down that route.
Join over two hundred members of the SCAD film community in the FemFilm Facebook group.
