In film, there’s never just one art form at play. Every shot represents the work of artists from across disciplines—cinematography, directing, screenwriting, yes, but also fashion, sound design, visual arts, and more. Among Pratt alumni, there are countless examples of those intersecting paths, and curves in the road too: directors who began as illustrators, sound techs who started as actors, cinematographers who became intimacy coordinators. The result is a world that feels deeply interdisciplinary, where the understanding of one’s own role is deepened by the understanding of others. Here, we talk to seven Pratt grads about how they’ve made their lives in film.
The Sound Technician – The Intimacy Coordinator – The Director–Animator – The Multihyphenate Collaborators – The Cinematographer – The Costume Professional
Zach Travis, BFA Film ’16 | Sound Technician
You wouldn’t know it from his recent work–which includes mic-ing Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield on the web series Celebrity Substitute–but Zach Travis didn’t come to Pratt to be a sound engineer. Travis spent his teens making skate videos, filming and stitching pieces of footage together for him and his friends, though he was never, as he says, “into cameras,” and editing was just “OK.” Travis came to Pratt as a film major, thinking he’d try out acting, screenwriting, and other disciplines until something stuck. What stuck was sound.
“I was very blasé about the whole thing,” says Travis, recalling his days as an underclassman, trying out different roles within films. “But when classmates started asking me to do sound on their school projects, I was like, ‘Oh, this is the thing.’”
Travis recalls being drawn to the technical side of sound work, which felt grounded in problem-solving. “I really like to try to figure things out and find solutions, and I think that naturally made me gravitate towards [sound],” says Travis. “It’s really rewarding when I’m presented with a problem, and I have to think, ‘Well, OK, how do I mix this? How do I make this work?’”
In film, those problems can be tricky. “There are things like, we’ve got four people talking in a car, but there’s no room for any of the crew, so how are you gonna get your sound? There’s a lot that goes into that,” says Travis. “Or, we’re only shooting this in a wide shot, from 50 feet away. How are you gonna record the talking on that, or cheat it, or fake it later?”
Travis credits Pratt’s classes for giving him a good base for the technical skills needed to make these situations work. But also, he says, “no matter how technical a class gets, you’re not really going to learn until you try to do it without supervision.”
Beyond the classroom, Travis forged a path as a freelancer in New York City’s crowded film scene. After graduating from Pratt in 2016, Travis used what savings he had to buy a TASCAM field recorder and a few mics. With that, he began looking for gigs on Craigslist, Mandy, and Facebook and committed to sound work, quitting his job at a barbecue joint in Gowanus. Today, Travis is entirely self-employed running sound for a roster of repeat clients.
Those clients, and the projects Travis works for them, have range. There’s mic-ing A-listers for Celebrity Substitute, talking head–style podcasts in Google’s head office in Manhattan, or capturing night ambience for other Pratt-grad indie filmmakers.
For Travis, the variety is gratifying.
“I often tell, especially my friends with nine to fives, that I could not do a regular job,” says Travis. “I love what I do because I get to work with different people every time, I get to go to different places and work on different concepts. I’m using the same skill set and the same tools for the same objective, but everything else is different every time, and that keeps it exciting.”
Kemi Star Alade, BFA Film ’26 | Intimacy Coordinator
The attentive thoughtfulness it takes to be an intimacy coordinator—the person on a film or theater set who facilitates scenes where intimacy is acted out—is what Kemi Star Alade says she does best.
“It’s so fulfilling to be a safeguard on set,” says Alade, who speaks about her work with a warm sense of pride. “An intimacy coordinator is someone who takes care of performers and the director, and ensures the overall–I wouldn’t say comfortability, because a lot of times, the things that you know are being asked are never comfortable–but the confidence in everyone on set to deal with the topics at hand.”
Alade found her way into intimacy coordinating almost by accident. Alade came to Pratt with her heart set on becoming a director of photography, but as she began working on sets, the technical sides of camera work didn’t work for her as much as the more human roles she found herself filling.
“To be a good DP, there’s technical things about a camera that you need to know to be able to execute, and that’s just not me,” says Alade. “I was always finding myself in that assistant director or producer role.”
Then, Pratt’s Film Department held a seminar with intimacy coordinator Olivia Troy, and a role she had imagined existed became real. “To know that this is a whole profession itself was really cool. She introduced us to this whole world,” says Alade—from the equipment and contracts to the subtle tips and tricks that form the tenants of an intimacy coordinator’s work.
“To know that this is a whole profession itself was really cool. She introduced us to this whole world.”
An intimacy coordinator ensures that consent is followed by all parties: by the actors (making sure actors stay within the physical boundaries set by one another) as well as directors and producers (making sure a director doesn’t ask an actor to do something not included in a contract). The work of an intimacy coordinator is “more expansive” than just consent, though, Alade says. It’s also about making an intimate scene feel intimate—by making sparks fly onscreen. “Fostering chemistry between actors is such a wonderful thing,” Alade says, “It’s great to witness.”
Establishing chemistry takes different forms for different people. Alade says that some intimacy coordinators play the role of a “shadow” on set, only stepping in when absolutely necessary. Alade takes a warmer approach, frequently checking in with actors, offering them water, and making sure that their confidence stays strong throughout a shoot.
“I like to be quite proactive on set because that helps me feel connected with the performer,” says Alade. Alade was a stage actor before Pratt, and much of her work as an intimacy coordinator shows her empathy for the often unglamorous side of acting. “There’s a lot of sets I’ve been on where an actor is just sitting in a corner until someone calls them,” says Alade. “It’s nice to be that person to be like, ‘how do you feel?’ Sometimes it feels like you’re the one person for them on set.”
Alade graduated from Pratt this year, and she enters a professional world where the work of intimacy coordinators is more visible (and necessary) than ever. For the films that do intimacy right, Alade is thrilled to understand how.
“Any film where you watch,” Alade says, “and you’re just like, ‘wow, this is such a beautifully done, intimate, passionate moment,’ it’s so great to be able to know the inner workings of that.’”
Siwoo Kim, BFA Film ’25 | Director, Animator
As soon as he could hold a pen, Siwoo Kim was drawing. “Last year’s calendar was my sketchbook,” says Kim, who, in addition to drawing on the backs of used calendars, says he drew on the wallpaper of his room before his parents finally got him a sketchbook. No matter the surface, the years of sketching paid off. Last year, Kim was a Sundance x Adobe Ignite Fellow, a role he earned partly from the strength of his animated film, Inside My Worn Out Drawer, Is an Ocean (2025). The film was Kim’s thesis at Pratt. Now, it’s making rounds at festivals, and has earned Kim a NFFTY New Talent Award.
It’s all a bit full circle for Kim—initially, he came to Pratt thinking he’d leave animation behind. “I went into film wanting to be like Bong Joon Ho,” says Kim. “I thought, ‘fine arts is dead for me, I’m gonna go into film.’ But then, as I spent time there doing all these different media, I was like, ‘You know, [animation] is actually cool too. I can bring that back in.’”
“Animation is a playground for me,” says Kim. “I’m just in my room, and no one gets to see it until it’s done. I do eventually want to collaborate with better artists one day”—Kim mentions students who majored in animation at Pratt and focused more on the technical side of the work–“but I never really collaborated with animation [at Pratt] because it was such a raw expression of getting my feelings out there.”
Courtesy of Siwoo Kim
Post-graduation, Kim is starting to make good on those hopes to collaborate, notably with Myrsini Aristidou, BFA Film ’13. Kim connected with Aristidou through a mentorship initiative with Pratt’s film department. Kim asked to be paired with an international filmmaker–Kim is from South Korea and Aristidou is from Cyprus–and they clicked nearly immediately. “I was asking her for advice, and then she got interested and started mentoring me through my process,” says Kim. “Now she’s my producer on my short film.”
Aristidou’s short films are well-decorated at international film festivals of years past, and her first feature film debuted this year at the Sundance Film Festival, where she and Kim met in person for the first time. Kim’s film I Would Rather Die Than to Cut My Hair played at the festival within the Ignite block, while Aristidou’s feature played for the festival’s flagship competition, where it won an Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic category.
“She’s so busy, and she’s taking time out of her life to help me, and that’s really nice,” says Kim. At the time of this writing, they’re in the throes of making Kim’s first proper live-action short, with Aristidou as his main collaborator. Kim pitches ideas, while Aristidou advises and keeps him accountable to timelines. They’re finalizing a script, scouting locations, and hunting for actors.
For Kim, it’s all a far cry from animating alone in his room. He says he’s ready for it, with Aristidou’s help.
“My senior year, everybody [in Pratt’s film program] made a live-action thesis, and I made animation because I was too afraid of working with people or compromising my vision,” says Kim. “This is my first real live-action film that I actually care about. I don’t think I would ever make it, or it would have taken me longer to get there, if Myrsini wasn’t there saying, ‘Where’s the next script? What are you doing? Like, let’s go.’”
William D. Caballero, BFA Digital Arts ’06 | Director, Animator
Brad Jones, BID ’10 | Set Designer, 3D Animator, Producer
With such a wide range of skills between them, the ways William D. Caballero and Brad Jones can collaborate are seemingly infinite. Jones calls himself a “digital designer; a jack of all trades and a master of most,” and calls Caballero a “jazz maestro of film,” speaking to his deft leadership as a director, and his willingness to give all members of a filmmaking team the freedom to let their strengths shine.
Caballero puts it more simply: “Brad is my creative platonic life partner,” he says.
The partnership has been decades in the making. Caballero and Jones met as members of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at Pratt, became friends, and supported each other’s work after college, mostly from afar.
That was until 2016, when Caballero asked Jones to build a set for Caballero’s web series StoryBored USA. As in previous projects, including his HBO series Gran’pa Knows Best, Caballero used 3D-printed action figure-like miniatures to animate StoryBored USA’s characters, which moved through Jones’s handmade set. But when Jones used his background in 3D animating for Caballero’s next big project, Chilly and Milly, a deeply personal film about Caballero’s parents, they found new freedom.
“When you’re being true to yourself, and when other creatives see that and join, and then bring their authentic selves, it will only enhance a project.”
Brad Jones ’10
“I told [Caballero] I would be able to match the quality in 3D rendering to still make [the characters] look like action figures,” says Jones. “But it would give us more latitude in posing or reshoots, and we wouldn’t have to waste time waiting for prints to be printed.” That flexibility opened a world of new possibilities. Chilly and Milly went on to earn a selection from the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, while Caballero’s most recent film, TheyDream, won the NEXT Special Jury Award for Creative Expression at the 2026 Sundance Film Film Festival. On TheyDream, Jones is credited as a writer, producer, animation producer, and cinematographer.
For Caballero, bringing on trusted collaborators is a must, in part because of the deeper mission his films on family serve.
“I grew up in a trailer in my grandmother’s backyard with two disabled parents, and our stories were pretty much not seen as part of the American narrative,” says Caballero. “It was time to change that. I thought I could be someone that could provide a voice to those who didn’t have any, and so I started doing work about my family.”
That wasn’t always encouraged. In Caballero’s post-Pratt education, a professor told him that “no one would ever watch” a film about his family. With the success of Gran’pa Knows Best, Chilly and Milly, and now TheyDream nearly 20 years later, Caballero has made a career in proving that professor wrong.
“The more I leaned into my identity as a Latino bisexual filmmaker committed to telling stories about underrepresented peoples and communities,” says Caballero, “the more, not just creative and financial success I’ve received, but also this feeling of purpose, and really living at my true potential.”
He hasn’t done it alone–Caballero is quick to cite the team of creative confidants he’s worked with over the years. It includes Jones, as well as Erica Perez, BFA Animation ’10, an Emmy-winning 2D animator who worked on TheyDream, and Seth Burney, BID ’04, who 3D printed the set and characters for Gran’pa Knows Best. Caballero assembled them and more, all while making intensely personal work that became increasingly highly awarded.
For Jones, it comes as no coincidence. “When you’re being true to yourself, and when other creatives see that and join, and then bring their authentic selves, it will only enhance a project,” says Jones. “It’s kind of cliché, but if you tell your truth you’ll find your audience, and not just an audience, necessarily, but your artistic family too.”
Sam Wood, BFA Film ’16 | Cinematographer, Entrepreneur
In Sam Wood’s line of work, you’re expected to be perfect. As a freelance camera operator who’s worked on films for Netflix and HBO, music videos for Bruce Springsteen, and the most recent Super Bowl commercial for Meta and Oakley, Wood knows that filming high-key projects often means nailing the shot on the first try, or losing the job.
“The first movie I worked on as an A-camera operator, I just kept in the back of my head that I could always get fired, which is probably not a healthy thing,” says Wood. “But I think that helps me not stress so much about it, actually. If that’s the worst thing that can happen [on a job], it’s not the end of the world. In life, there’s a lot worse things that can happen than getting fired, in terms of your health and your family and friendships . . . I haven’t been fired yet, luckily.”
If it sounds like Wood has a healthy relationship with working under pressure, it’s because he’s had nearly his whole creative life to develop it. Growing up on Long Island in Huntington, New York, Wood first honed his filming skills making skateboarding videos with friends, which were planned with long drives into the city, where expectations about nailing the shot were similarly high.
“In skateboarding, there’s no worse feeling than your friend trying a trick for hours or days, and then they land it, and you don’t have the shot.” Fortunately, Wood got the shot plenty of times. As teens, Wood and his friends successfully sold some of their skate clips to companies like Adidas and Red Bull, which helped Wood land his first production assistant roles early in college.
“As jobs get bigger, the language that you speak—at least as a camera operator between the cinematographer and the director—is very theory-based. I really value that aspect of Pratt now.”
Having a few professional clips under his belt at Pratt, Wood says his education in film theory helped bridge the gap between his earlier work and the bigger projects he works on now.
“In the beginning of my career, I didn’t think I needed [film theory] at all,” says Wood. “Now, as jobs get bigger, the language that you speak—at least as a camera operator between the cinematographer and the director—is very theory-based. Being able to have a clear and concise understanding of what they’re trying to create is all film theory. I really value that aspect of Pratt now. When you get on to larger jobs, you end up drawing back to that mode of thinking.”
Being able to communicate in this way has helped Wood land roles filming for a wide variety of projects—films, music videos, and Super Bowl commercials included. While movies are Wood’s favorite—he’s working on a major motion picture now that he can’t disclose just yet—Wood says being able to work on different kinds of projects with different expectations helps him build a full, well-rounded life.
“You still have a chaotic schedule, because you never fully know what’s coming next, and your schedule is always shifting around,” says Wood of his career. “But I think that’s the fun balance of making a healthy living, being creatively fulfilled, and being fulfilled with friends and family, personal hobbies, and stuff like that—to me, that’s the sweet spot.”
Jade VandenBrink, MFA Communications Design ’25 | Costume Professional, Entrepreneur
Part of Jade VandenBrink’s path from fashion to film sounds almost too full circle to be true. But it is: before VandenBrink worked on the set of Devil Wears Prada 2 for veteran designer Molly Rogers, she was working as an intern in the fashion industry, where, as she tells it, her life “was very Devil Wears Prada.”
“People would tell me, ‘go find this yellow fabric,’” says VandenBrink, “and then I would come back with five yellow fabrics, and they’d be like, ‘None of these are the same yellow.’”
“Everything was like the cerulean thing,” VandenBrink says, referring to Meryl Streep’s now iconic monologue from the original Devil Wears Prada. She found her groove helping dress the cast in the movie’s sequel.
VandenBrink always had an interest in fashion. She’s long made upcycled clothing to sell at markets, a practice she honed while living in New Zealand for a year after college. Before coming to Pratt to study communications design, she attended a postgrad fashion program at Parsons School of Design, marking a big career switch—VandenBrink had earned a bachelor’s in animal science from the University of Saskatchewan, where she was training to be a veterinarian.
Then, her career took another turn when VandenBrink met Rogers at a trade show she attended with a friend. VandenBrink introduced herself and dropped Rogers a business card. Eight months later, she got a text—it was an offer to work on the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That. It was her first job in costumes.
“She said she was impressed, because usually people come up to her and they’re like, ‘I like shopping, and so I want to be a costume designer!’” VandenBrink says of Rogers. “She said that I came up, I was confident, and I said I really like working hard—I think that was the giveaway.”
“I want to be in more of a role where I’m overseeing projects and giving feedback. . . . Film trained me for that.”
On the job, VandenBrink went out into the city with Rogers to scour stores and choose clothes for the characters on And Just Like That—characters whose high-fashion tastes are among the most distinctive parts of their personalities. The skill translated well to Devil Wears Prada 2, which Rogers asked VandenBrink to come back for two years later.
Between those projects, VandenBrink completed Pratt’s MFA Communications Design program, looking to grow her design skills and apply them in the broader professional world. While film work keeps finding her—she’s recently worked in costume design for the cheerleader sitcom Stumble, an Austin Powers–parodying Verizon commercial, and a still-confidential movie—VandenBrink is turning her focus to an upcycled-workwear company she created earlier this year.
“Pratt made me realize that I may be better at creative direction and exhibition [design], but film is a good stepping stone for that,” says VandenBrink. “I want to be in more of a role where I’m overseeing projects and giving feedback. . . . Film trained me for that, because I was helping style, collect, and organize clothes, then give feedback on them; I was involved in the whole creative process . . . I gained a lot of confidence for that at Pratt.”
Winning Moments in Pratt Alumni Film History
From sound engineering to screenwriting and scoring, alumni have made their mark in cinema since the form’s early days. Here are highlights of some of their celebrated contributions.
Stereophonic Sound
Engineering alumnus William “Bill” Garity won an Academy Award in 1941 for inventing Fantasound—the stereophonic sound system that made Disney’s Fantasia the first film to be released with multidirectional sound. Garity attended Pratt before serving in World War I with the US Signal Corps and went on to work closely with Walt Disney beginning in the early 1920s.
Titles
Alumnus and former faculty member Robert Brownjohn won a British Design and Art Direction Gold Award in 1964 for his work on the title sequence of Goldfinger (1964). On the sequence, critic Will Hodgkinson of The Guardian wrote in 2017 that Brownjohn “had succeeded in turning a title sequence—generally an afterthought—into high art.”
Directing
In 1981, Robert Redford won the Academy Award for Best Director for Ordinary People. Redford attended Pratt to study painting before finding his canvas on screen. In 2016, in an interview with his grandson, Redford said that Ordinary People came at a time in his career when he felt torn between acting and painting. “Then I realized,” said Redford, “why can’t I combine the two?—which led me to be a director. Ordinary People was my first venture.”
Adaptation (and Acting)
Harvey Fierstein, BFA Art Education ’73, adapted his Tony Award–winning three-part play collection Torch Song Trilogy for film in 1988. Today, the plays are considered groundbreaking for their candid storytelling of LGBTQ+ life in the 1970s. Fierstein reprised his lead role in the plays on screen and went on to lend his signature voice to memorable roles in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Disney’s Mulan (1998).
Logo Design
Ghostbusters released in 1984, using the now unmistakable logo designed by illustration alumnus and the film’s associate producer Michael Gross. The Ghostbusters logo was voted the most iconic work by a Pratt alum in a 2012 survey of Pratt alumni for the school’s 125th anniversary.
Writing-Directing
In 2009, I Love You Phillip Morris, the first film directed and written together by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, both BFA Film ’91, was nominated for several awards, including Golden Camera, at the Cannes Film Festival. The film drew what Rotten Tomatoes called one of the best performances of star Jim Carrey’s career.
Short Film (with Original Song)
Shawn Christensen, BFA Communications Design ’97, won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short for his film Curfew in 2013. In addition to writing, directing, and costarring in Curfew, Christensen also released a single, which he composed for a dance scene in the film after licensing rights for a different song fell through.
Visual Effects
David Shirk, BFA Film ’89, won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Gravity (2013), the sci-fi thriller starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Shirk served as the film’s animation director, overseeing a team of nearly 30 animators to accomplish difficult tasks like simulating zero-gravity space.
Score
Daniel Lopatin, MSLIS ’10, also known by his artist alias Oneohtrix Point Never, won the Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for his score for the Safdie brothers film, Good Time (2017). Lopatin went on to score two more films for the Safdies—Uncut Gems (2019) and Marty Supreme (2025)—as well as produce music for artists like The Weeknd, Moses Sumney, and Soccer Mommy.
Screenplay
Liz Hannah, BFA Film ’07, earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Screenplay for The Post (2017), the political thriller about The Washington Post’s publishing of The Pentagon Papers, which became one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2017. Upon reading Hannah’s script, Steven Spielberg, who went on to direct the film, said, “my entire outlook on the future brighten[ed].”
VR Experience
Brett Purmal, BFA Computer Graphics ’02, was recognized for his work on Carne y Arena, a virtual reality experience written and directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, recipient of a 2018 Academy Award for Special Achievement. Using VR technology and animation worked on by Purmal, Carne y Arena aims to immerse viewers in the hardships of migrants attempting to cross the border from Mexico into the United States.
Editing
In 2022, Lillian Benson, BFA Art Education ’70, was honored with the Career Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Film Editing from American Cinema Editors. Among other works, Benson’s editing filmography includes the widely celebrated Eyes On the Prize documentary series, which painted a detailed image of the American Civil Rights Movement.
Costume Design
In 2025, Paul Tazewell won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for his work in Wicked. Tazewell’s Wicked win marks a long run of praise for his costumes—his first Tony for Best Costume Design was for Hamilton in 2015—as well as making him the first Black man to win the award.
Feature Debuts
At the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, alumni Myrsini Aristidou, BFA Film ’13, and William D. Caballero, BFA Digital Arts ’06, both won awards for their first feature films—Aristidou for Hold Onto Me and Caballero for TheyDream.