CEAS students and RoboBronco join the cast of feature-film Cherry

Numerous students – mostly from the CEAS – pulled all-nighters on a Saturday night to pretend they were engineering students in Cherry, a feature-length movie filmed in Kalamazoo. Actor Kyle Gallner has the leading role as an engineering student in his first year at an elite college engineering program. WMU’s Parkview Campus, with its high-tech facilities, provided an excellent backdrop for the story line.

Between 3 p.m. on Sat., Nov. 15, and 8 a.m. on Sun., Nov. 16, CEAS students starred as extras for the film’s classroom scenes. The long night included multiple takes of CEAS students sitting in a real Parkview lecture hall pretending to be students in a fictional classroom. Bright lights, huge camera setups, and an abundance of electronic gadgetry filled more of the lecture hall space than the students.

In between takes, the students waited in the Extras Holding area, the DENSO cafeteria.

 

"Being in the movie was crazy and fun," said Kendall Vasilnek, a civil engineering senior and film extra who added that filming took longer and required more people than she had initially thought it would.

Several faculty and staff members also stayed most of the night. Dr. Paul Engelmann, chair of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, and Courtney Rawlings, a graduate assistant in manufacturing engineering, oversaw the filming that took place in the CEAS Plastics Lab.

Dr. Tarun Gupta, IME professor, and Srinivas Ghattamaneni, a graduate assistant in industrial engineering, supervised RoboBronco as the robot made its acting debut. Other participants included Dr. Karlis Kaugars, CEAS computer-aided engineering director (CAE); Chuck Overberger, CAE technician; and Tammy Bergman, CEAS office associate.

Cherry’s screenwriter and director is Jeff Fine, who said that the movie is being shot in Michigan because of the state’s new tax incentives for filmmakers.