Eleora Funk
Staff Writer
Sarah Tice was “the drawing kid” growing up. After starting in 2-D media, she transitioned into working with sculpture. Creating the fourth dimension with film was next in her natural evolution of artistry.
Having run out of other dimensions to create in, Tice chose to grow as an artist by completing a B.F.A. in Film and a M.F.A. in Feature Film Production at the University of Central Florida. Her latest evolution in creativity is becoming the new head of Florida Southern’s Film program.
One might think whim has led Tice to a variety of creative practice, but there is a method to her tendency to change, and it’s a piece of advice she offers to her students.
“Leave every choice motivated,” Tice said. “A lot of the time we get into a very comfortable area where we feel like ‘I know exactly what to write, or I know exactly what to do.’ and there’s a lot of oversight in that.”
To her, motivated choices in script direction, genre and casting play well off of one another. This is what propels Tice as a film artist.
“When you’re forced to analyze those choices, it makes you start to question them or change them… strengthen[ing] your argument and what you’re already doing,” Tice said.
She creates films that speak to her interests in the neurology of cultures and sociological study. She specifically considered neurology as a path. But she ultimately decided that filmmaking, motivated by her interests in culture and the human mind. It was the best way for her to use her creative voice while doing her areas of interest justice.
Upon completing her M.F.A., she debuted her first feature film, “DID I?”, a thriller that parallels and subverts villain tropes of mental illness. Over the years, her choices in genre and subject have varied greatly.
When an actress in Tice’s circle spoke on her struggles with type casting, Tice made a film suited to her peer’s interests and talents: her 2019 short film “Oh, Woman”, is a period piece that vignettes a Latinx woman’s wavering thoughts on wifehood and suffrage. Tice’s variety in subject choice and genre further emphasize her ability to adapt to the motivations of her art.
Tice embraces the variety of her filmmaking, and in her teaching, there is no singular approach she pushes her students to take with their films.
There are universal skill sets that Tice strives for her students to understand – with her strong background in cinematography, she specifically advocates for her students to master the Exposure Triangle and other specialized lighting practices. But after her students learn such common groundwork, Tice’s greater hope is for each filmmaker’s style to emerge as their own.
With the right tools and a mindset that emphasizes the motivation of every artistic choice, she trusts that her students will create “the most potent films that [they] can.”
