BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alan E. Franks, 22, of Smoke Rise, has received a Fulbright Scholarship to study filmmaking at the University of Sydney’s College of the Arts.
Franks is a 2006 UAB civil engineering graduate and a former UAB Honors Program student. He recently re-enrolled at UAB as a communication studies major.
Franks’ interest in filmmaking began after taking an ethnographic filmmaking course offered through the UAB Center for Urban Affairs, he said. After completing the course, Franks won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Alabama Documentary at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in 2006 for his short documentary film, “She’s a Lady,” about the historic Lyric Theatre in Birmingham. Franks says he wants to combine his love for science and filmmaking into a career creating educational documentaries that offer a fresh perspective on social issues.
Franks will pursue a master’s of film and digital image degree at the University of Sydney. The one-year master’s program incorporates theory and practice and encourages students to explore individual experimentation in filmmaking.
Franks has proposed a documentary film about the modern and old-fashioned engineering technology cattle ranchers in the Australian Outback use for communications, for transportation, for tracking the location of cattle and for pumping water onto their massive homesteads. Franks says he hopes his documentary will be an example of tradition merging with new technologies and that it will be of teaching relevance to University of Sydney’s engineering school.
Franks is the son of Woody and Margie Franks of Smoke Rise.
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