Roy Cross
photo by Michael Wees
Roy Cross, MFA
- Professor (Film Production), Cinema
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Biography
Education
- BFA, Film and Video Production, University of Regina, 1990
- MFA, Studio Arts (Film Production), Concordia University, 1998
Biography
Professor Roy Cross teaches in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. He studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan and received his MFA from Concordia University. His feature film So Faraway and Blue, commercially released in Canada, was warmly compared to the work of Leonard Cohen by many critics and reviewers. He has received funding from three provincial arts council agencies as well as the Canada Council. He has also received industry funding from three provincial funding bodies as well as from the National Film Board and Telefilm Canada. His films have played festivals and screens around the world.
He has two teenage sons who have acted in his films or been caught on camera as Roy often shoots diary-type footage of his daily life.
Research interests
Early cinema, silent era, black and white film processing, sound design, processing apparatus, 35mm Konvas cameras, reversal, black and white film, nitrate films, intermittent motion, flicker, shimmerAreas of expertise
alternative approaches to script-writing, sound design, analog audio, low-budget, black and white, diy, environmentally friendly methods for film processing Labcaf, liberating parameters, working with constraints,
A Dark Blue Sky
A Dark Blue Sky
Cast Shot, The Ballad of Ava
Teaching Activities
Teaching Philosophy
Roy was the recipient of the 2015 Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award.
Roy's teaching philosophy revolves around a quadrant that includes theory, writing, praxis and critique. The umbrella that shelters all of these components is the artist’s process.
He believes that a series of constraints placed on students does not limit their creative possibilities but rather frees them to explore deeper imaginations. As such he refers to these limitations as liberating parameters. All his assignments and exercises come with a series of liberating parameters, whether the number of actors or locations they can work with, the amount of equipment they have access to, or formal considerations, among many others. Born out of cost necessity, this has been a part of his own artistic practice for many years but has proven to be creatively beneficial far beyond fiscal concerns.
Research activities
Research
Funded by a three-year FRQSC research-creation grant, Cross is currently researching low-toxic photochemical processes with his motion picture processing lab: The LabCaf. He built a 4x5 pinhole camera and is undertaking tests to shoot a landscape and portrait project.
Currently in post production The Ballad of Ava is a 15 minute experiment in fiction filmmaking. The film is one story, broken into three chapters each written and directed by a different filmmaker.
He recently completed a new feature length script, Falling to Earth. He plans to shoot the film in 35mm anamorphic, black and white and with the intention to process the negative in the LabCaf.