#AZRA ROSNA ALKAN

[musesmilk]

AZRA ROSNA ALKAN

Azra R. Alkan is a modern day magician, and like all great magicians, her work is often hidden in plain sight. Alkan is one of the professional visual effects artists behind Advantageous, Westworld, Lethal Weapon, and Gotham, with a specialization in compositing. Every green screen is an opportunity for Azra to build a new world.

“How can we help others? How can we bring peace into our communities? I want to make people ask themselves these questions. That's my passion.”

Muse’s Milk: Tell us your story.

Azra R. Alkan: I'm from the small capital of Turkey, Ankara. Ankara is a very political town with lots of businesses and gray government buildings. In [spite of] a scenery like that I grew up creating colorful paintings, attending drama courses, writing poetry, and picked up a guitar/self taught myself my favorite songs. I guess it's fair to say any creative outlet was making my world more colorful. I loved story telling in every shape and form. Where I am from, art is not valued, it is second class. You are not to be respected as an artist, especially as a woman. I think I wanted to rebel against all of the stereotypes around me.

I was the first in my class and studied science and math. However, everyday I would go home and create a new story either through writing or drawing. I loved movies and my birthday gifts would be stuff like, “The Stanley Kubrick collection.”

MM: So how did you decide to pursue VFX? 

ARA: It was not until I came to America that I decided to pursue Visual Effects. I got a scholarship from Texas A&M University to study visual programming. During this period I really got interested in the visual side of things and took enough art classes to get accepted into a film school in California. I was learning cinematography and loving every second of it. But something was missing for me. Yes, I was in love with creating movies, but in this world creating movies has a lot to do with “who you know” to create anything “serious.” As much as I loved being in a team, I craved for individual tools to create worlds. It's funny how it happened, but when I finished up my film degree I somehow ran into an amazing art school in San Francisco, and fell in love with it. I knew it then; the answer to combine every single aspect of me was to learn visual effects!  It spoke to my technical side (programming, math, science) and it spoke to my story telling side. 

In one sitting I could create a breathtaking world with no limits for my movies. All I needed was my ideas and my drawings, my computer and my camera. It included every aspect of me. Finally I understood every single thing I have ever studied led me to this path and to be successful in it.

MM: What do you hope to achieve as an artist? Is there anything you are particularly passionate about right now?

ARA: To be frank; I have been working in big studios ever since I graduated school, it's amazing because I get to watch my art in the movie theatre and on TV every week. It's incredibly validating as an artist for your work to reach millions and...well, to make good money from it. But what I am really, really interested in is creating indie festival movies that speak to today's issues. I always work on getting into festivals such as Sundance and Cannes. The stuff that gets through their door is raw creativity with no boundaries. You are not trying to make a big shot studio executive happy. You are purely telling someone a story. 

My love for indie film started when I was in school, and we were lucky enough to form a studio of talented people who had no money, no tools, just the willingness to make it. At the time I was the lead artist for an incredible movie called Advantageous. It was about ageism, feminism, and financial issues a single mother goes through in a futuristic setting. I was so proud to be a part of this group. And surely enough we got that movie to Sundance and it was absolutely the most amazing thing I was proud of.

After this I collaborated with a talented director, and we wanted to talk about another controversial issue; modern terrorism, media's take on it, and how we as a generation are desensitized to the violence that's happening today. 

Aleppo - is the name of the short movie- got into couple of film festivals including The Lighthouse International Film Festival. It was a very controversial topic and still is, so I am proud that in my own way I can bring light to victims' lives and reach out to people and tell them what is happening around the world, outside of our privileged lives. 

How can we help others? How can we bring peace into our communities? I want to make people ask [themselves these questions]. That's my passion. I want to use my influence in the media arts to reach into people's hearts, to be kinder to one another, to tell [other] humans about themselves, and to heal through art.