We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ira Irvani. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ira below.

Ira, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

A few months ago, I wrapped production on my film “Birds of Paradise.” It’s a queer period-piece short film set in 1930s Hollywood during the enforcement of the motion picture production code, which censored… a lot of things. In this film, I focus on censorship within the LGBTQ community, attempting to show, in this fictional narrative with characters based on real-life queer stars and artists from that time, how the production code really erased them. There are many reasons why this project is meaningful to me. For a little bit of context, I am a graduate student in my second year at the San Francisco State University MFA Cinema Program. It is a three-year program, but we are required to make two films: our first-year film and our thesis film, which is made in our final year.

I was very proud of my first-year film. It was the first time I built a set from the ground up in a soundstage, which excited me because I want to pursue a career in production design and writing/directing. I also gained a better understanding of costume design, set design, lighting, and camera work from all the very talented people on set and who are part of the school.

I wanted to write, direct, and design another film before I did my thesis. So, I decided to start working on “Birds of Paradise.” I worked on a project similar to this for my undergraduate thesis film at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I did extensive research that culminated in a short film. However, I graduated during the COVID years and was not able to make the film I wanted to make to its full capacity. So, I went back in and created another story dealing with the same themes of sexuality and censorship. “Birds of Paradise” has been the first project I’ve done in a long time that was not part of a class, school, or some graduation requirement, which was exciting in the beginning because I knew that once I leave school, this is how my life is going to be: a lot of trying to make movies and art while having a job to support myself. So, during development, I would wake up, go to school, go to work, go home, work on my second job as a TA and grade quizzes and papers. On the weekend, I worked at my third job, and then somehow worked on the script and casting and everything else that went into making this film.

I obviously did not do this alone. Many people from my first-year film came back. Elaine Caton, my favorite cinematographer ever, came to be the director of photography. Daisy Stock, who impressed me with her acting performance, came back to play a bisexual Hollywood actress in “Birds of Paradise.” Carla Grace Fajardo, who is my rock, did makeup but came back as one of the producers and really organized EVERYTHING, on top of making the film a success. And that was one of my favorite parts: that past film had so many people on it (it was the biggest film I worked on at the time), but with “Birds of Paradise,” more people came to help and collaborate because they saw the vision and they wanted to help bring this film to a place I never thought it would go to.

The theater department at SFSU was instrumental in the success of the design and look of the film. Michael Schweikardt, an associate professor at SFSU, guided me on how to properly build a set on the soundstage, working from scale models, and studying color theory. Carson Blickenstaff, who is the scene shop manager at SFSU, worked with me on how to optimize what the theater department already had in stock (in terms of wooden flats to build the walls, doorways, and windows) but also showed me exactly what I needed to get that the school could not provide. Joe Greene, the costume shop supervisor, let me come in almost every day to look through the costumes and give me feedback and advice on the styles I was going for.
Overall, I just feel so much pride for this project: the story, the lighting and camera work, the acting, the whole crew just made a film that looks so perfect, even though it is a work in progress. The editor and I are currently finishing up the final cut to send over to get it color corrected and the sound mixed and scored. After that, we are going to submit it to as many festivals as we can, focusing on the queer-specific ones first and hoping that this will be a useful calling card for me and everyone else who participated, showcasing our collective vision and talent.

Ira, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Ira Irvani, and I am a queer filmmaker in San Francisco currently enrolled in the SFSU MFA Cinema Program. I think it all started when I was in middle school. I was a theater nerd and loved crafting little sets in my parents’ garage, making my friends do stupid things in costumes in front of a camera. In high school, I got to do a lot of student-written one-acts where I explored writing and directing for the first time. Throughout high school and community college, I began making my own little short movies inspired by my classes and life experiences. After participating in a college film summer program, I realized that I have a love and passion for production design. I found that whenever I begin a new project, I always think about the production design first. So when I transferred to UCSC, I really honed in on this passion, while also loving the research aspect of school and education. That’s why I continued to pursue my master’s degree. I love having education influence my creative projects. However, I hope to start doing more collaborative work, like doing production design on a project that someone else wrote and directed.

Currently, my focus has been on my own creative projects, working with stories and themes of characters who are lost and out of place. As a queer man, I am drawn to the alternative images of gender and sexuality seen in pre-code Hollywood, which have largely been lost and forgotten. As an artist, I am intrigued by the feud between Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo during the Renaissance. As a first-generation American and someone who has gone through special education, I am curious to look into the flaws and opportunities of the American education system. As a former student-athlete, I want to explore young people’s traumas and sacrifices in striving for success and perfection.

I particularly enjoy working on period pieces. My first-year film was set in the late 1960s, and I had so much fun with costumes, props, furniture, and color. I was really trying to live out my “Mad Men” design fantasy with that project. And then “Birds of Paradise” was set in the 1930s, so it was a little trickier to pull off that look. But what I really enjoy about period pieces, and why I love production design, is that I can tell a clear story just by what is shown on screen. I like to think of Renaissance paintings and how everything in the paintings meant something with religious iconography. That’s what I kind of do when I take on a film: I think about what they are wearing, what is in their room, and how I can make it all further tell the story of these characters.
I think I am most proud of all the people who have helped me along my journey. Like I explained before, my success is really tied to all the people who have collaborated and helped me make these movies. Without them, I would be nothing. I hope that through collaborating on films, I will meet more talented people who can help me as much as I can help them.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I was working on my first-year film at SFSU, I ran into a lot of obstacles. I knew and made it very clear to the School of Cinema when I started this program that I was very passionate about production design, and that I wanted to explore that in my writing and directing, especially since I had never really worked on a soundstage apart from some small production assistant work. For a bit of context, the SFSU School of Cinema does have a working soundstage available for use, but actually getting access to use it was the biggest challenge. Most professors in the program tried to convince me at least once not to use the soundstage, saying that I would be better off renting an Airbnb because “nobody has ever made the soundstage look good,” and that the soundstage was better as a teaching tool and not for use in a full production. There was a time when I was booking the soundstage that there was a discrepancy in the length of time I was using it for. A standard film shoot is about twelve hours; building the set takes about a week, and filming usually takes another week. However, the operating hours for the SFSU soundstage were only for eight hours. When I tried to request the soundstage for two weeks for twelve hours a day, the school said I was asking for too much. They said, “… the soundstage has never before been booked for two weeks by the same person… and a two-week booking does not sound fair.” This was something I did not understand because people rarely use the soundstage and it is almost never booked. I was honestly just wanting to experience making a film on the soundstage since the access was there, and once I graduate, it would be a lot harder.

I think where I am trying to go with this is because of how strongly I fought, it made a difference in how the school sees the soundstage and how students can benefit from using it to further work on their visual storytelling skills. And I guess this is practice for myself because I know I am going to face a lot of rejection and obstacles, and I have to fight through them like I fought to use the soundstage. As much as the school has done for me, having made two amazing films and currently working on my thesis, the San Francisco State University Cinema Department cannot call itself a “state-of-the-art” film school if it does not provide the basic materials and support for artists. I entered this state-of-the-art institution with the expectation of gaining access to facilities and equipment that would enable us to develop as artists and professionals. As graduate students, we believe it is the responsibility of the school to provide us with the necessary resources to facilitate our growth and creative exploration.

My fellow graduate students and I are currently drafting a letter to send to the dean of the school addressing our concerns, hoping to make the school more accessible and inviting for artists, as resources and classes continue to be cut due to “lack of funding”.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I think, for me, the next step is trying to get onto the film festival circuit. Other than that being a dream since I was in middle school because I see it as a way for people to make a name for themselves, have their work shown on a large scale, and to meet and potentially collaborate with other filmmakers and artists associated with those festivals. Another goal is, as I finish “Birds of Paradise” and go into working on my thesis, I am drafting out an application to the SFFilm residency program, which is a year-long program that helps filmmakers with current or work-in-progress films, and assists them financially, with distribution, and caters to filmmakers trying to make their first feature film.

I am really putting a lot of weight on this new film “Birds of Paradise” as we finish it up. In the long run, I would love to continue making movies about queerness, outcasts, and people lost and out of place. I’m also interested in critiquing lifestyles, specifically our throwaway culture and the amount of waste we create. But somehow making that natural and subliminal, delivering the message of sustainable ways of life through fiction filmmaking.

It has been hard sometimes to keep truckin’ through, especially because I have been hearing back from festivals I submitted to for my first-year film, saying my film did not make the cut. But I think there are a lot of really great things on my horizon, and it’s my friends, family, and fellow artists that really keep me going.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @lost_dream_pictures

Image Credits
Gabriel Studer-Randall and Carla Grace Fajardo