In addition to being the director of Photography for “Oasis Motel,” the new drama from Shoot the Stars, junior Amy West has been teaching herself to fire dance. Jackalope Magazine recently sat down with her to talk fire dancing, her filmmaking and performing for yourself. Jackalope Magazine: What brought you to SFUAD? Amy West: I am originally from Petaluma, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area.   JM: Oh, that explains the hippy vibe. AW: Yeah, exactly. (laughs) I’m definitely a northern California girl at heart. I went to an art college fair at my high school, and I was interested in getting out of California. I know it’s a little counter intuitive, and I figured there’s probably a shit ton of film students out in California, and Santa Fe looked like it would be a different experience and give me a different perspective.   JM: I’m assuming you were a dancer before you began fire dancing— AW: I was not!   JM: OK, so how did fire dancing start? AW: I have a best friend back home who goes to Reed College in Oregon, which is like a super hippy liberal college, and they have a fire dancing team. We got together over winter break of my sophomore year, after she’d been doing it for a while, and we made a video together. While we were making it, she was like ‘hey you should do this too,’ and I was like ‘Oh my God I want to.’ I had done color guard in middle school and there’s a prop called staff that she bet I could [use]. So we went and got a curtain rod, and I just started playing with it and my friend said ‘you you can do this,’ so I...

SFUAD student filmmakers discuss their work showing at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival Oct. 17.