My name is Raife Levy, and I’m a junior from Miami, Florida, studying biology and English at UNC-Chapel Hill! As a filmmaker, I use my background in English to create stories that first and foremost capture elements of the human condition through a strong social commentary (inspired by two of my biggest writerly influences, Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway). I believe that all good stories will resonate with parts of us, even if it’s not something we’ve personally experienced. Working from that baseline, I focus on creating characters that feel emotionally driven and have complex arcs so that they not only work towards a more complicated argument, but also reflect the emotional depth that we all have in real life.

In ENGL 256’s three films, I was scriptwriter for two and team captain for one. Jumping into the course, I was eager to be a scriptwriter on our first project, the five-second film, because I wanted to see how the skills I had learned in creative writing classes translated to the visual medium. It turns out, they don’t translate so well! I learned that in movies, there’s a lot more to it than creating the story you want — you have to make something that’s visually complex so that viewers engage more wholeheartedly. Since the first project, I developed my skills in cohesive scene building and cinematography (something I got even more practice with in the jack-of-all-trades captain role for my dormroom documentary film).

Now, as a filmmaker, my stories are all grounded in the foundations of film. When I started writing “Coffee Chat” (my DV Dialogue Film), I began from the moral / social commentary (in that case, that love and compatibility aren’t the same) and worked my way up into the plot. I considered how the coffee cups could act as a thread, how I could foreshadow the movie’s plot twist, what archetypes the characters and storylines would fit in, what allusions I could add, and so on. I let the moral / social commentary dictate how I’d bring the conflict to resolution, so that the ending felt cohesive to the rest of the film.

While the ENGL 256 class is coming to an end, I have an ignited passion for filmmaking (specifically scriptwriting), and I’m so excited to see where my creative endeavors take me next! Please stay tuned for my next projects!

My favorite film quotes:

• “work in progress” – me
• “work in progress” – me