News and Media

Article By: Piper Hale
Published: Nov 15, 2011

Claudia Lovera got her start in film studying mass communications in her home country of Venezuela, and then staying in the area to work for Oruga Films, a television studio. In just a few years, she climbed the ranks from a content editor for TV station websites all the way up to a project manager for DIRECTV Latin. In this position, she supervised a team of designers, editors and animators working on promotional projects.

She stayed in this position for several months before growing restless with its limited potential for advancement. She decided she wanted to work in a higher position within television, possibly as a producer, and started looking for master's degree programs that would help prepare her for this career. On the recommendation of some SCAD alumni she knew, Claudia began researching SCAD's film and television program. "I looked into the program and I immediately loved it," she says. "Of all the film programs, it was the one that I liked most."

Claudia left Venezuela and moved to Savannah to begin her studies. "I thought moving to the U.S. was going to be harder," she says. "But the school made the transition really easy." She says the supportive international community at SCAD helped to ease the move. "There are people from all over the world, and it's so cool how all the different cultures come together," Claudia says. "I went to my brother's graduation at another university, and it's very different there. All the little groups stick together and don't talk to anybody. They just hang out alone. But here it's not like that, which is very nice."

In her time in the program, Claudia says, "I've taken classes in all the different fields of film: production, writing, cinematography, and now I'm focusing on producing only." She has worked as a producer on several projects in both film and TV, mostly students' side projects or theses of student directors.

In her most challenging undertaking so far, a film called "Cleansed," Claudia took on the role not only of the producer but also the director. With double her typical responsibilities, Claudia had to organize the details of scheduling and filming and find a crew while also overseeing artistic direction. "It was a lot of work," she says, though she is thrilled with the final product, which she proudly considers her brainchild.

Other works Claudia has produced at SCAD include a fine art video installation for a gallery and a documentary that follows a master surfboard-maker who lives in the mountains and travels for hours to get to the beach. "Every quarter, I always try to do one project for class and then do one or two extra," says Claudia. She also found the time last year to volunteer for the Savannah Film Festival, which, she says, "was great! They were screening almost twelve hours a day, so you could just go walking around. And if you gave out your business card, you could get a lot of contacts."

Until her graduation, Claudia won't take on any more large projects; instead, she'll focus on her thesis, a pilot for a sitcom about the staff of a magazine. After she graduates later this year, Claudia will move to California to begin work in her new role as an associate producer for marketing agency Draftfcb.

 

In the long term, she plans to stay in the U.S. and continue working in production. She is open to working in either film or TV, but says that she is most interested in TV. She likes the faster pace of TV production, she says, and she prefers to move quickly from one job to another rather than spending two years on one project.

No matter which medium she ends up in, Claudia says a career in production is her dream and she is looking forward to beginning her professional future at Draftfcb. "I like turning other people's ideas into reality," she says. "I make them tangible. And it's working on that, and working on that to fulfill the visions of artists, that makes me love production."

 

View Claudia's online portfolio.