Pittsburgh-based filmmaker Michael Fimognari conducts weeklong master class in Mt. Lebanon

This week, a group of students had the opportunity to peek into the process of filmmaking from a professional who’s worked on big-name projects like “Doctor Sleep” (2019) and Netflix’s “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” film trilogy.

Michael Fimognari, who has made his between-projects home in Pittsburgh for nine years, is delighted to bring the joy of film to a new group of passionate beginners. His five-day-long workshop started Monday.

“The students have so many good questions and are coming at it from different experiences,” he said. “It’s this really nice collision of people and ideas, and so this class speaks to that.”

The 49-year-old has always been a lover of films.

“As far as I’ve known myself, I’ve always wanted to make movies. This is a childhood dream, so I’m fortunate to be able to do it,” he said, citing some childhood influences.

“I think I fell in love with a lot of science fiction, so those made an impact on me,” Fimognari recalled. “I was terrified by the movies I probably shouldn’t have seen, like ‘Poltergeist’ and ‘The Shining,’ so those made an impact on me, as well. I really think that it was just a love of mine to watch anything and everything, and if I had free time, I was watching movies.”

But the road wasn’t always a smooth one. After high school, he wasn’t able to go into film schoo limmediately, as he’d planned.

“I just didn’t have the grades for it,” he said. “I had to do a course correct and sort of get my feet under me, and once I was able to reapply, I got into Penn State’s film school. That was a very important experience for me, to get my hands on cameras, and learn and learn, and fail and meet some very special instructors.”

He went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Southern California and then started working in the industry.

“Even out of school, I made films that I’m proud of, but I don’t think I made a film that people had seen for another eight years or so,” Fimognari said. “You put in the time because you love it and you can’t help but want to do this, but it certainly requires patience and persistence.”

His career has focused primarily on directing and cinematography, but he loves all aspects of the filmmaking process.

“I started my career as a cinematographer and in the last five years have been directing, and I love all sides of it,” he said. “I have such a deep admiration for the cast and the crew of any film because it truly takes every piece of it to make it come together.”

He also can’t pick a favorite one of his projects: “I’ve been fortunate to be part of some stories that I think speak to messages that touch people’s lives. There’s been some stories about grief and loss and family, and I connect very much to stories that focus on scenes involving family loss and grief. And they can be entertaining.”

Fimognari has a long-running professional partnership with horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan. They first collaborated on 2013’s “Oculus” and have made a number of films and TV shows together, including series “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Midnight Mass,” and films “Doctor Sleep,” “Gerald’s Game” and “Ouija: Origin of Evil.”

“I’ve been working with Mike Flanagan for almost 12 years now, and we’re like brothers. It’s been a true joy to collaborate with him,” Fimognari said.

He’s also a huge Stephen King fan, so getting to work on film adaptations of King’s work has been a great experience.

“Such a towering writer in our entire lives … he’s shaped so many people’s visions for not just terror and horror, but the family,” he said.

That especially is true of “Doctor Sleep,” the novel of which King published in 2013 as a sequel to “The Shining.” Being an admirer of the film adaptation of “The Shining,” Fimognari got to revisit some iconic moments.

“That was like stepping into your own childhood dreams, or maybe nightmares,” he said. “Those were sets that we rebuilt for that film, and to walk into the Colorado Lounge as a real place and to be able to make a movie there was pretty incredible.”

He felt the same about the adaptations of Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allen Poe stories on which he had the opportunity to work, “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

“I’ve been thoroughly enjoying these adaptations of incredibly powerful writers.”

Then there’s the “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” trilogy, based on a series of young adult novels by Jenny Han. Directing these films may seem like a departure from his typical fare, but Fimognari doesn’t limit himself by genre.

“It’s very much about whether it’s a story well told,” he said. “Those books that Jenny Han wrote are terrific and I think they have a very thoughtful representation of young people discovering love and family and working through a very tough time. It’s a special story because it respects all sides of growing up.”

Fimognari moved to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles nine years ago and comes back any time he’s not working on or preparing for a project.

“I wanted to look for somewhere that had seasons and a little bit more space and a place to call home, and Pittsburgh was the place,” he said.

The master class at Absolute Value Academy covered a cross-section of the filmmaking process, especially the preparation that goes into translating a script to the screen. Fimognari hopes most that it encourages participants to delve deeper.

“A week is really going to energize you and give you some things to consider as they go out there,” he said. “It’s such an important thing to do, to ask the question of everyone, ‘Why do you want to make films?’ and ‘Why do you watch films?’ and ‘What parts of it matter to you?’”

Absolute Value Academy in Mt. Lebanon, owned by Heather and Tom Earley, is a progressive education servicethat offers a range of educational programs from original and group classes to private sessions.