World cinema students craved experience not only studying films but also producing them. When the executive producer of an Emmy Award-winning television series entered the scene as a new professor of practice, students gained the opportunity of a lifetime.
In any drama, there is a moment of crisis. A time when it’s all on the line, circumstances are out of the heroes’ control and failure has real consequences.
On a sweltering June afternoon in the summer of 2025, senior world cinema major Diana Wells ’26 faced one of those moments on the set of Student Film: The Movie.
Wells had earned the responsibility of being the associate director of the first feature film produced by Clemson University. The sun was going down, time and money were burning, and the cast and crew were sweating. It was the final day of filming, and they had to create the movie’s most pivotal moment — the “sunset kiss.”
“The stakes were incredibly high, and the energy was just tense and on edge,” she recalls. “Like, what if we don’t get it?”
Dozens of people had to work in perfect harmony: professional actors, student actors, professional mentors and student crew members in each department — camera, makeup, audio, even a drone operator. Years of investment and growth for Clemson’s world cinema program hung in the balance.
The Art of Production
To understand how that moment came to be, go back to 2023. For about a decade, the world cinema program had been growing with a strong emphasis on film theory, which remains its philosophical bedrock. But students were clamoring for experiences in film production that they couldn’t get in the classroom alone. Enter Sam Sokolow, professor of practice.
Sokolow made his name in the film industry as a producer, most prominently as the executive producer of Genius, an Emmy Award-winning biographical TV series released through National Geographic. The show’s first episode was directed by Oscar-, Golden Globe- and Grammy-winning Hollywood icon Ron Howard (who many still know for his boyhood role as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show).
Sokolow is a man who knows how to get things done.
“What we set out to do was to build a bold and forward-thinking physical production curriculum that prepared Clemson students right here on campus to be ready to compete for jobs and to make movies immediately,” he explains.
As soon as Sokolow arrived in Tigertown, he set the movie in motion. He secured an education grant from the South Carolina Film Commission to create an experiential learning course. He quickly began assembling a professional cast and crew members who would educate, mentor and work shoulder-to-shoulder with students to produce a feature film at breakneck speed as part of a new Clemson world cinema Summer course. He brought in educators that included BrandCinema’s Nicholas Levis (High Strung), Geoff Herbert (The Irishman, The Hunger Games) and actors including Tim Stoltenberg (Failure to Launch), Finesse Mitchell (Saturday Night Live, Ant Farm) and Jayson Warner Smith (Song Sung Blue, The Walking Dead). But by March 2025, he still hadn’t filled the most important crew position: the director.
“I needed someone who wouldn’t just tell me when things were going well but who would, without reservation, absolutely let me know every single time when I did something wrong,” Sokolow says. “Of course, my wife came to mind.”
He called in the biggest favor of the production to his wife, South Carolina native Julia Fowler (Netflix’s Country Comfort, YouTube’s Southern Women Channel), who agreed to write and direct.
Making Movie Magic
Student Film: The Movie reads as a fictionalized autobiography of the world cinema program. In it, scrappy students led by a desperate professor navigate the perils of academia and the filmmaking process to make a movie. On screen, each hurdle is played for maximum comic effect.
For Wells and the other students involved, it was a serious learning experience, and it wasn’t limited to world cinema majors.
Kylon Griffin ’25, a management major and member of the Clemson Football team, had a major role. A bone-crushing 200-pound safety with 46 career tackles, Griffin flexed his acting chops as “KJ,” a film student with no athletic aspirations at all.
“I’m thankful that they took me in as one of their own, and I took them in as my own,” Griffin says. “We all just looked at each other as one, and that’s what made us be able to make the movie so well and enjoy each other while doing it.”
Chemistry was essential. Multiple scenes featured the ensemble cast together on screen, making their reactions to each line as essential as the delivery. Griffin had to bring his A-game each time the cameras rolled, especially during one moment of gasp-inducing physical comedy.
“It was exciting because everybody around was saying, ‘Make sure you don’t get hurt!’” he remembers. “I didn’t want to back down. I had no problem with doing it at all. I was like a 6-year-old kid running around the house.”
While Griffin dazzled in front of the camera, Wells strove mostly behind it. As associate director, she was Fowler’s right hand throughout the production, drawing on her own acting experience to work one-on-one with student actors and bring out their best performances.
“It was a really gratifying experience because my favorite part of directing is working with actors, watching them grow and learning exactly how to talk to them,” she says. Her work also stretched into the countless tasks that allow a story to come to life on the screen.
The details could range from tiny points of script continuity to the mammoth task of shutting down an entire downtown street for a scene, which the crew accomplished thanks to the partnership of the city of Clemson and Mayor Robert Halfacre.
Never was the attention to detail tested more acutely than on the final day of shooting. Because of the weather, the original shoot date was delayed, and the entire scene revolved around capturing a moment with the perfect sunset lighting. There were no second chances.
Griffin compares the day to being on the football field: “It’s all the same; just keep your calm.”
Spoiler alert: They got the shot.
“I can’t even describe the amount of relief that we had knowing that we had everything that we needed,” Wells says. “We had made a movie. There were tears. There was hugging all over.”
They had survived the crucible of filming, but the true test lay ahead. This movie was supposed to be a comedy. Would it make anyone laugh?
The Premiere
In February, the cast and crew reunited at the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts for the movie’s on-campus, invite-only premiere. The glistening sweat of the last day of filming was replaced by glittering sequins. A small army of photographers mingled with the crowd, along with members of the press. Around 800 guests were in attendance. There was a red carpet. There was charcuterie. There was pressure.
“I don’t care how much money you have to make a film or who is involved in it — nobody from Steven Spielberg down to Quentin Tarantino knows what they have until you screen it for an audience,” Sokolow says. “And with comedy, it’s tenfold. Laughter can’t be faked.”
The movie rolled, and within the first few minutes, the house was cackling thanks to the combination of Fowler’s laugh-a-minute writing and the cast’s comedic timing.
“I was sitting next to Julia, and I was exhaling,” he reflects. “I was seeing her kind of just take in the reality that people were laughing, and it was wonderful.”
Griffin describes the moment as “surreal.”
“I didn’t know what to expect — the amount of people to show up, how the movie would end up,” Griffin says. “But it was all so perfect, honestly. Everybody was full of joy, including me.”
The completion of the film has positioned the program for future success. As of the premiere, Sokolow had already secured a second grant from the South Carolina Film Commission to produce another Clemson film this summer.
Griffin plans to complete a graduate degree at Clemson, continue playing football and pursue more opportunities in acting and entertainment. Wells was able to translate her experience as associate director into a job on a project filming in the Caribbean. She graduated in May and is continuing to pursue her career in film.
Opportunities for film careers in the Southeast have been expanding rapidly in recent years, and Clemson has become a part of the pipeline for future filmmakers.
Between 2003 and 2025, $994,517,577 was spent in South Carolina on film production, according to the South Carolina Film Commission. In neighboring Georgia, $2.6 billion was spent on film production in fiscal year 2024 alone.
Wells arrived in Clemson the same semester as Sokolow, and just like the final day of filming, she made the moment count.
Timing is everything.
“My timing here feels very ordained,” she says. “Like it was on purpose.”
Sokolow’s arrival at Clemson and the students’ determined passion to make films coincide with a pivotal moment: The Southeast’s film industry is gaining momentum, and the University is investing in the talent and tools to help it grow.
For Clemson and its next generation of filmmakers, the moment is exactly right.
In 2025, Clemson became the accredited academic partner of the Trilith Institute, the educational arm of Trilith Studios. Located near Atlanta, Trilith Studios is the largest movie production facility by square footage in North America, and it has been the shooting location for three of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time: Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
John Eby is the public information director for the College of Arts and Humanities.
