NOTE: The Senior Close-Up is a frequent feature on the Bard Athletics web site, with the focus being the life of a student-athlete at Bard. Here, every student must complete a Senior Project to graduate. The Senior Project is an original, individual, focused project growing out of the student’s cumulative academic experiences. Preparation begins in the junior year, and one course each semester in the senior year is devoted entirely to the Senior Project. The student submits the completed project to a committee of three professors and participates with them in a Senior Project Review.
By Jim Sheahan
Bard College Sports Information Director
From an athletic standpoint, Bard College senior Billy Sarno has always been something of a jack-of-all-trades.
He competed in track and field in high school. His specialty, throwing the discus and javelin, was tempered by his team’s need for him to run middle distances and relays as well. He even ran as a member of the cross country team as a favor to the coach, who needed more athletes out there for St. Paul Catholic, a small high school in Bristol, Conn.
As an athlete at Bard College, Sarno’s attention again has been diverted. He’s been a sprinter, a middle distance runner, a thrower … and a member of the club rugby team.
“Athletically, I’ve never been able to just concentrate on one thing and get really good at it,” Sarno said. “That’s why rugby works for me now. You need to have the ability of the middle-distance runner and a bit of a physical presence as well.”
Fortunately for Sarno, his academic endeavors have been far more focused.
“In high school, I found Windows Movie Maker on my computer one day and started messing around with it,” Sarno said. “That really started everything for me. I liked putting images with music, I loved music videos … I knew I wanted to study film, but I didn’t have a camera in my hand until I actually got to Bard.”
After initially considering his father’s alma mater, the University of Southern California, Sarno chose Bard because of the Film and Electronic Arts Program. He’s a film major deeply immersed at the moment in completing his senior project, which is a short film.
“I thought I was going to make a music video,” Sarno said, “because music is still a huge part of what I draw my inspiration from.
“I had a lot of setbacks with my Senior Project last semester,” Sarno said. “I realized that what I was writing was less of a short on its own. I really had to distill it down. A short film is more like a Haiku.”
For his short film, Sarno has chosen music by Avenged Sevenfold – a song entitled Gunslinger – which was part of the soundtrack for the movie “Jarhead” in 2005. The song is about coming home from war and being there for your family. He has already shot parts of the short in Rhinecliff, Tivoli and Red Hook.
Members of the rugby team are among the actors he’s chosen for his film, which is about a man who is leaving to join the Army; the whole thing begins when he wakes up in the morning and ends at the train station when he departs. It’s a day worth of emotion condensed into about 12 minutes. It will be anyway, once he finishes it. Gunslinger will be played over the closing credits.
“For me, it all about the planning before the shoot,” Sarno said. “I like shooting, but I like it more if the right planning has been done beforehand. Right now, I feel good with what I have in my hands, but of course I feel pressure. It’s my Senior Project.”
In the meantime, Sarno is the captain of the rugby team. He played rugby for part of his freshman year but didn’t play again until this spring. He was on the track and field team for three years before this spring.
“It takes a certain type of mindset to play rugby, and I didn’t have it when I was a freshman,” said Sarno, who admitted to having a loose front tooth during the interview. “Now I’m all about it, and they made me captain.”
What happens after graduation in May is up in the air at the moment.
“I might stick around here and help a friend who is planning to start a small business,” Sarno said. “I also have a friend in the city who started a small production company. It’s all gig work anyway. But I’m not going to let my film degree go to waste.”
