“Photonics” may not sound like a subject many young people could have fun with, let alone understand, but Boston University film professor Garland Waller and a BU student-run video productions company is trying to make it just that.
Waller, and the BU student-run video company Hothouse Productions, are working in conjunction with BU’s Photonics Center to create an animation about a young female scientist named Lia. It’s one of a few projects the professor and the production company are tackling over the coming months.
“It targets pre-teen girls,” Waller said, “to get them excited and interested about the world of photonics.”
Fittingly, Lia’s name means “light in action,” Waller said.
The Photonics Center, the Community and Technology Fund and the Provost Technology Fund are all supporting the work, she said. Hothouse Productions recently signed a deal with Fable Vision, and within the coming year Waller said she hopes to have a prototype.
Independent of Hothouse, Waller spends her free time working on a documentary – “Small Justice: Little Justice in America’s Family Courts.” Court TV is among the stations considering the project, according to the Hothouse Productions website.
And Waller is also working on a top-secret new adult animation.
“I can’t tell details,” she said, “but big-name show dealers and HBO programming are looking at it.”
She has produced, written and directed such other films as the 26-part series “Your Child 6-12,” “Rose Kennedy: An Intimate Portrait” and “The Kennedy Women: An Intimate Portrait for Lifetime Television.” She has won a number of awards, including the Grand Prize at the International Film Festival in New York, the Gold Prize at the Film Festival of New York and five New England Emmys. Waller also runs Pink Bubble Productions, an award winning children’s entertainment company that originally aired on WCVB.
With her extensive rsum, College of Communication Dean Tobe Berkovitz says she is a great asset to COM.
“Garland Waller is an inspiring teacher and a first rate filmmaker, and she brings that into the classroom,” Berkovitz said.
Waller says she loves all of her classes, especially Hothouse Productions. She appreciates that the advanced undergraduate film students are able to work with executives and gain first hand experience necessary for their field, making the class unique, she said.
“Someone like professor Waller makes the reality of the careers that students are going into come alive,” Berkovitz said. “She makes students think to themselves, ‘How will I achieve my career goals?’ and then they model them after hers.”
Tay McEvers, a COM freshman, said she was most interested in Waller’s presentation of Lia.
“I really liked the fact that she is making a cartoon about science that will help little girls,” she said.
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