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Summer school for some area graduate students meant spending their days in sunny California learning from Anthony Hopkins.
Six Northern Illinois University students recently returned from working on Oscar-winner Hopkins' latest adventure, an independent film called "Slipstream" that he wrote, directed and stars in.
"For any film student, this is a chance of a lifetime," said Waubonsie Valley graduate Mark Hoffmeister, 24, while in California.
"What I'm learning right now is a very complex process of trying to pick up dialog that sounds like it looks. If you have a close up of someone you don't want them to sound far away. You want it to sound how it looks to the human eye."
It's one of the many technical skills experienced hands-on that Communications Department Associate Professor Laura Vazquez hoped for her students when she worked with veteran Hollywood producer and NIU alumnus Robert Katz to create the trip that earned college credit.
"I tried...