tl20080915-01 "Carrie Wood Arts Editor Three people are sitting in a room. The game is Russian Roulette. A girl points the gun at herself and pulls the trigger. Bam. Cut to Cook Library. Last Monday, Towson graduate Erik Myers and his crew of 2006 alumni returned to their roots. Shooting a scene at a familiar location where they have worked on many class projects before. They turned the top floor of Cook Library into a scene for their latest film �ROULETTE,� which they plan to submit it to film festivals such as Tribeca. �We really wanted to give Towson a shout out because so many of us are grads and we wanted to be able to show our roots and show where we came from,� Myers said. People were stationed on either side of the shooting area to direct students around the cameras without interrupting the filming. According to Myers, the day went smoothly without any unforeseen issues. �The first day of shooting, when we looked at it, it was nothing like anything I�ve shot before,� Myers said. This time around, a Myers� film project has taken on a new feel and new look. Instead of using cheap, everyday video equipment that can be purchased at any tech store, he has high-definition cameras and top-of- the-line tools at his disposal. �People see the footage and they go �oh my God, this looks like a movie,�� he said. �And to me, that�s the coolest feeling in the world.� Myers decided to get into the movie business after spending a long time writing screenplays and other works. His determination to see his ideas on the silver screen led him to pursue it as a career. Assisting Myers in the production of the film is J65 Productions, which has helped with cameras, lighting and more. Myers has worked with them before � he won the award for Best Documentary at the 2006 Towson Media Arts Festival with Jamie Bender and Mike Baldwin, both of whom are part of J65 and were on the set of �ROULETTE� to help out behind the scenes. Myers� successes as a filmmaker and writer, winning various Towson departmental awards and gaining recognition for his scripts, have been contrasted by some major disappoint-ments. He decided to start working on �ROULETTE� only after a high-profile gig went belly-up due to a local studio�s financial crisis. �The biggest failure for me was being able to take all of my suc-cesses and parlay them into an opportunity to make a film, and go Kiel McLaughlin Editor in Chief In an apparent preemptive strike against upcoming budget cuts, the University System of Maryland has imposed a hiring freeze across all state institutions. A memo from the USM went out late Thursday afternoon to all state campuses, Towson provost James Clements said. The hiring freeze applies to all faculty, support staff and administra-tive positions that have not yet been filled. The USM has foreseen a significant budget cut to higher education due to the struggling economy, administrators said. It could be the largest decrease in funding since 2003 when hundreds were laid off across the system. �The expectation is that there will have to be a budget reduction and the USM will not be exempted,� James Sheehan, Towson vice president of administration and finance, and chief financial officer, said in an e-mail. �The freeze is [in my opinion] in anticipation of the budget reduction.� Sheehan said Towson expects to receive the budget within the next two weeks. The USM did not respond to multiple e-mail requests for comment. As the state�s growth institution, Towson has taken on hun-dreds of additional full-time equivalent students each year for half a decade. The state�s funding for each student has grown by over $1,000 during President Robert Caret�s six-year tenure. The impending budget cuts, however, could jeopardize the University�s ability to continue to take on additional students. �You can�t really grow unless you have faculty to teach the classes and people to support the students,� Clements said. �We don�t know what�s going to happen. Sometime in the next couple weeks we should learn a lot more.� The campus took on approximately 700 additional FTE for this academic year and was expecting to continue to grow at the same rate next year, administrators said. Now on TheTowerlight.com: View video Word on the Street, comment on articles and send a letter to the editor... Sept. 15, 2008 www.thetowerlight.com The Towerlight Published by Baltimore Student Media for the Towson University Community Monday FREE System imposes hiring freeze TU growth in jeopardy due to slow economy, pending budget Returning to Cook for one more flick Erik Myers, crew of 2006 grads shoot scene of new film at familiar on-campus location Kristofer Marsh/The Towerlight From left, Mike Baldwin, director Erik Myers, Jamie Bender, and Adam Ballweg gather behind the camera while shooting a movie scene in Cook Library Monday, Sept. 8. The group of 2006 Towson graduates plan to enter their project �ROULETTE,� in the Tribeca film festival. See MOVIE, page 16 See FREEZE, page 11 "
