The highest compliment one could pay Daniel Drake on his senior thesis would come in the form of side-splitting laughter. A Practice of Art student, Drake’s final project was the pilot of his original television comedy titled Dichlund. The show follows a desperate twenty-something woman on an absurd job search that lands her in a corporation which makes The Office seem sensible.

“Daniel’s thesis show was attended by dozens of production assistants, cast members, and supporters. It takes a village to make the kind of film Daniel made, and it was obvious from the enthusiasm in the raucous crowd that Daniel created a community around film,” said Director of the Visual Arts Program Jeff Whetstone.

Drake’s love for the film and television screen has its roots in a high school class taught by his mom. An English teacher in a school that had not offered film as part of its curriculum, Drake’s mother created an International Baccalaureate film course. “As she was learning how to teach the class, I was in the class learning it with her,” Drake said. “We both just developed this love for it at the same time.”

Despite relating to his interest, Drake’s parents envisioned a more practical career path for him—and he did, too. He entered Princeton intending to be a SPIA major with Law School ambitions. Then, as ever more creative writing courses filled his transcript, he recognized his passion for creating film and television, one way or another. He took every screenwriting course that was offered, especially enjoying Al Samuels’s “Baby Wants Candy: Creating Comedy for Television” and Maysoon Zayid’s “The Art of Stand-up,” which culminated in performing original work in front of a public audience at McCarter Theater. He’d clearly found his passion. “That was the most fun thing I did,” he said. “I love that kind of stuff. Now, I do it all the time.” He joined the Triangle Club ensemble and sought opportunities to perform stand-up. 

Taking Susanna Styron’s “Advanced Screenwriting” course spawned the first iteration of Dichlund. He spent the ensuing two years revising the script before choosing it as his Senior thesis project. Creating the 30-minute pilot required a full gamut of skills. “Casting was easy,” he said, “I know some very talented people.” He chose music major Gabriela Veciana ‘24 for the lead role, Jenny, and ecology and evolutionary biology major Charlotte Kunesh ‘24 as Jenny’s friend, Ingrid, pictured in the scene at left. Both women also perform in the Triangle Club with Drake.

Though A&A and the Visual Arts Program provide funding for senior projects, Drake still needed to be resourceful. “I had to budget ahead of time very heavily,” said Drake, who had strategically written a script he knew he could film on campus. He also looked to the student body to assemble his crew. The only skills he couldn’t tap among the Princeton student body were lighting and camera work; for that, he hired Ernesto Barreto as the director of photography.

Drake found coordinating the myriad logistics of filming to be the most challenging part of the project. “I’ve worked on a real film set with hundreds of people where there’s always someone to keep you in check…where as a director you have nothing else in your mind but the film,” he said. “It’s very frightening to be on a small film set when I’m the one keeping everyone in check.” Fortunately, Assistant Director/Producer Alison Silldorf ’25, majoring in computer science, and Production Assistant Zach Lee ’26, majoring in Spanish and Portuguese and journalism, shouldered some of the responsibility.

Had he attended a school focused on film, he may have had a larger pool to draw from, but at too great a cost, said Drake. “I find Princeton very rewarding,” he said. “I learned a lot here about the rest of the world and many things I wouldn’t learn at a film institution. I couldn’t imagine going to school with just people who like filmmaking. Here, you meet a lot of people who like a lot of different things, and that influences your writing and your creativity.”

Drake’s work is influenced largely by his favorite comedy shows like Arrested Development, 30-Rock, or Atlanta, which he refers to as the cartoonish single-camera sitcoms of the 2000s. But he also looks to modern art for comedic inspiration. “I think modern art is above all a really funny thing – it’s odd and quirky,” he said, “The principles of photography, composition, surrealism, and absurdism are really prevalent in comedy.” He singled out Sherrie Levine among influences, who was known for explicitly appropriating the work of famous artists. “She was inspired by Marcel Duchamp to copy another artist named Edward Weston,” Drake noted. He appreciated her premise that all art lacks originality. “I’m making something with the knowledge that it is part of a tradition rather than trying to make something totally original,” said Drake. “Making a sitcom is effectively compiling cliches in a lot of ways—it’s a Postmodern mindset.”

Studying filmmaking at Princeton has changed dramatically since Drake began four years ago, he says. “When I came in there were maybe two people on campus doing film who I knew of, now there are maybe 20,” he said. He sees a growing community of filmmakers. “A lot of first-years ask me about my work because they want to do it too,” he said.

Princeton is responding to the growing interest in film. Two new faculty focused on film, Christopher Harris and Nicolás Pereda, will join the visual arts program in fall 2024. “The appointments of filmmakers Chris Harris and Nico Pereda mark a transformative moment for the Visual Arts Program, as well as for the study of film at Princeton,” said Whetstone.  “They couldn’t come at a better time.” 

The history and cultural impact of film are taught across disciplines at Princeton; now a growing number of students can participate in filmmaking. Whetstone looks forward to Harris and Pereda becoming integral to university-wide conversations and research in film. “Harris’s work fuses abstraction and musicality into the interrogation of the Black diaspora and Pereda creates narrative structures that weave in and out of scripted story and live documentary,” said Whetstone. “These diverse approaches will offer students in visual arts an expansive perspective on making films, and a glimpse of the possible futures for the medium of moving images.”

If all goes as planned, Drake will be well into “working in a grunt job” by the fall, en route to a creative position. But first, he has one last performance to offer as a Princeton undergraduate, appearing with the Triangle Club alongside Veciana and Kunesh for the Reunions 2024 staging of Ship Happens at McCarter Theater on May 24, 2024 at 8:00 pm.

Regardless of what comes next for Drake—whether as writer, director, or performer—he is looking forward to making you laugh.

Watch a read-through and screening of Daniel Drake's Senior Thesis Film Dichlund.