Writer and director Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour visited Trinity University last week at the invitation of Patrick Keating, communication professor, to speak on his experience with the film industry.
Osei-Kuffour was on campus from Oct. 1 to Oct. 4, meeting with film students over lunches and dinners, visiting Keating’s class and giving a guest lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 2. According to Parker Parent, senior communication major and film studies minor, Osei-Kuffour’s start was very similar to what Parent is experiencing now. Parent attended his guest lecture, as well as dinner and a small group meeting, where he got to talk to Osei-Kuffour more about his own projects and receive advice from the director.
“He got directing jobs off of his student films which is both cool because I’m making a student film but also the pressure is on. I got to make something good,” Parent said.
Before Osei-Kuffour began to pursue filmmaking, he wanted to be a video game designer. Originally he was a computer science major at Stanford, but after taking film studies courses such as his class under Keating, he began to pursue a new career.
“I started to realize that a lot of what I liked about video games, particularly like Zelda and some of the more story-driven games, was the directing,” Osei-Kuffour said. “I started to realize very quickly that if I wanted to become a really great game designer, I had to become first a really great filmmaker.”
Before Keating came to Trinity, he taught film studies at Stanford University to many students, including Osei-Kuffour. Keating said that he has watched all of Osei-Kuffour’s works and praised Osei-Kuffour highly, describing Osei-Kuffour’s episode of ‘Shogun’ as one of his favorites, but Osei-Kuffour spoke highly of Keating as well.
“Patrick was one of the key professors that I had at Stanford,” Osei-Kuffour said. “I remember going to class and actually caring and understanding about film studies.”
Although Osei-Kuffour worked on many shows of many genres, according to him, his favorite genres are psychological thrillers and coming-of-age. His projects “The Midnight Club” and “Black Box” combine these two genres, and Keating and Osei-Kuffour talked about combining both the personal and horror aspects of a film, specifically on Osei-Kuffour’s “Black Box.”
“It’s not shock horror. It’s really about character, but it has some of those suspense and scary moments,” Keating said.
Osei-Kuffour explained his own concerns and other people’s concerns for his handling of the horror genre.
“Early on, people were a little worried that ‘Was this too sentimental? Was the film too emotional? Could we add in more horror elements? Should we add more horror elements?’” Osei-Kuffour said. “I think, the thing you should focus on is the character’s journey, because it doesn’t matter if it’s scary if you don’t care about the characters.”
Just as Keating influenced Osei-Kuffour into entering the film industry, Osei-Kuffour is now providing guidance to Trinity’s film study students. Parent’s time with Osei-Kuffour, Parent was directly inspired by Osei-Kuffour’s work and received advice from him.
“His feature film was kind of similar to my capstone film, and so it worked out that I actually could talk to him about similarities,” Parent said. “Definitely some bits and pieces of inspiration.”
Osei-Kuffour has one piece of advice to hopeful filmmakers.
“The most important thing as a storyteller is to understand and to have a very clear, strong point of view,” Osei-Kuffour said. “Know the types of characters you’re interested in, the types of worlds you’re interested in, the types of stories you like to tell.”