The Amelia Project
Flying Scooter aims to train next generation of Pittsburgh lmmakers
You don’t have to study filmmaking to become a filmmaker. All you need are the right mentors and opportunities to serve as guides along your journey.
That’s at least how Flying Scooter Productions co-founders Jennifer Schlieper and Courtney Gumpf see it. Neither of them went to film school, and yet they’ve been able to establish a niche for themselves in Pittsburgh’s filmmaking scene through various documentary projects, commercial work and brand strategizing services.
Last year, Flying Scooter launched The Amelia Project, the company’s nonprofit arm that aims to bolster Western Pennsylvania’s film workforce by helping local students gain firsthand moviemaking experience. Last month, The Amelia Project held its inaugural Rolodex networking event at Point Park University, during which 16 women with ties to Pittsburgh’s film industry dispensed their hard-earned wisdom to more than 100 enraptured attendees.
“It almost seems impossible,” Gumpf said of breaking into Pittsburgh’s film community. “‘I don’t know anyone, how do I get into that?’ ... [We’re] really taking this as a responsibility to Pittsburgh and saying, we have great talent and crewhere. Let’s build them up, train themhere and let them blossom.”
Pittsburghers might be familiar with Flying Scooter’s work on the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s “Front Row” digital concert series and Light of Life Rescue Mission’s “Eye of the Needle” documentary. Both The Amelia Project and Flying Scooter’s logo were inspired by famed aviator Amelia Earhart, who Schlieper has always admired as someone who “bet on herself” and “amplified other people in the community.”
She and Gumpf lived up to that first ideal seven years ago by launching Flying Scooter Productions, and now they’re focusing on the latter mission through The Amelia Project. Their attempts to fortify Western Pennsylvania’s film talent pool mirrors the logic behind the Pittsburgh Film Office and Pittsburgh Public Theater’s recently launched joint “CREATE PA: Pittsburgh Film & Theater Works!” workforce training initiative.
“We want to be a convener,” Schlieper said. “The more we get kids involved in film, the more talent we’ll be able to educate in this region.”
Flying Scooter and The Amelia Project have already given a group of Pittsburgh-based college students plenty of opportunities to help out with “The Ocean – Five Years,” a recently completed documentary about a young man channeling his grief through music, and “BirthDay,”another documentary they’re currently casting for that will chronicle the lives of five high school juniors through their respective graduations.
Then there’s Rolodex, in which Flying Scooter gave their cohort and other aspiring young filmmakers a chance to hear from the likes of Morgan Overton, CREATE PA’s workforce director; Ellen Doherty, Fred Rogers Productions’ chief creative officer; Cara Friez, The Warhol Creative’s senior post-production manager; Nancy Mosser, owner of Lawrenceville-based Nancy Mosser Casting; Minette Seate, WQED’s managing director of production and programming; and more.
“It was really cool to see the planning and implementing everything we talked about it,” said Brooke Bauer, a Duquesne University freshman and Flying Scooter marketing intern. “It seemed like everyone there was super engaged, whether it was the students or adults there.”
Bauer is among a group of Flying Scooter/Amelia Project marketing interns the Post-Gazette spoke to that also included Duquesne senior Kira Hutton, University of Pittsburgh sophomore Sissi Hai and 2023
Carnegie Mellon University graduate Olav Carter. While Carter earned a bachelor’s degree in film and visual media from CMU, the three current students are all marketingor business majors.
They’ve been involved with everything from submitting “The Ocean” for festival consideration to filming “Birth Day” casting videos. Hai mentioned how much she has enjoyed conducting demographic research on local high schools that maybe featured in “Birth Day.”
“We are learning so much,” she said. “Every day is a different project we get to work on. It never gets boring.”
Hutton has gotten to attend a few Flying Scooter client shoots and has learned a lot just from “seeing everything that goes into the production process.” That’s also what Flying Scooter has unlocked for Carter, who has been a production assistant on Pittsburgh-filmed Hollywood projects like “Mayor of Kingstown,” “The Deliverance” and “Anything’s Possible.”
“You get to see the second step in that process,” he said of being on large-scale sets. “I was excited to see the first step, especially with a company that’s really, really well-known.”
Carter introduced Audrey Lim, a freshman film and history major at CMU, to Flying Scooter during a talk he gave at his alma mater. That inspired Lim to attend Rolodex, which resulted in her earning one of five scholarships given out that day. She used The Amelia Project’s funding to make a short film that wrapped production in early April.
The whole experience “really just opened my eyes to the greater film community in Pittsburgh,” as Lim put it. She wants to do a formal internship with Flying Scooter and The Amelia Project in the fall now, which is music to Schlieper’s ears.
“Regardless of where you’re from, you can make a difference,” Schlieper said. “It doesn’t matter if you go to film school or not. ... There are places to learn and connect. There are people who want to do that,and that’s what we want to do.”