FNMS Alum Hammad Hassan ‘14 discusses filmmaking beyond Wheaton

Hammad Hassan ‘14 recently completed editorial work on two recent series, Ghosts of Beirut and The Money Game that drew upon his experiences in Film and New Media Studies.

In 2022, Hammad started working on Ghosts of Beirut, a Showtime scripted series following a global operation by the CIA and Israel’s central intelligence agency to track down one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. “It was my first scripted TV series. I worked with a really good team of editors during the post-production. And in terms of the post-production workflow on that show, I was pretty much in charge of it.” Although working on a scripted series like this was new to Hammad, it was a great learning experience for the future. “You learn a lot just by doing the job. Obviously, you have a skill set going to grad school, or going to film school, [but] the best way to learn skills is just by doing it. And the skills you learn translate to the next show.”

More recently, Hammad has worked on The Money Game, an Amazon Prime documentary series about college athletes taking advantage of the new name, image, and likeness policies that now allow them to profit from endorsements. “The post-producer reached out to me because he had worked with an editor that I’d worked with before back in 2020. They asked me about my availability, if I could come help out and do all the assistant editing work like setting up the project and the workflow, and it aligned perfectly because at that time, I was looking for a new project to start on.” The project had the biggest post production team that Hammad had ever been a part of, and it was also on a very tight schedule. “There were days where the computers would go offline, and me and a team of assistant editors had to troubleshoot stuff like that on the fly, but it was good…figuring out how to get things moving regardless of all the roadblocks we ran into.”

Hammad thanks his success in the industry on his time both at Wheaton, and also at the American Film Institute (AFI), where he received his MFA. “When I took classes [at Wheaton], that’s when I really learned filmmaking. You’re learning about how to use a camera and what post-production software you’re comfortable with. It’s having that trial and error and being able to play around with a camera and play around in post that I was able to really learn how I wanted to be as a professional and as a filmmaker.” Hammad also noted how Wheaton prepared him to communicate effectively, a very important skill in the professional world. “I feel like that was the Wheaton College education, [learning how to] write and articulate everything in a timely manner. After writing all those 16 page papers, writing up a long email is easy for me. You get very good at communication.” After graduating from Wheaton, Hammad attended AFI, which was an invaluable experience in getting hands-on experience and getting used to working in a professional film environment. “In your second year, you’re working with post-production vendors, so it’s a good exposure of learning how to work in a studio environment without actually being in one. It prepared me a lot.”

When asked about advice for students looking to get more involved in the film industry, Hammad recommended doing a lot of reflection on where your skills and connections are at the moment, and where you want to get them to. “There’s a lot of different paths. You have to understand what connections you have, and what capabilities you have. You could get connections just getting on a job, but sometimes it might not be the job you want to do for the rest of your career. That’s when grad school might be helpful. What’s good about [grad schools] is they give you hands-on training from industry professionals.”

Hammad is currently working on a climate documentary called Code Green, which is being submitted to Sundance. If you would like to keep up with Hammad’s film journey, you can check out his website, https://huhassan786.wixsite.com/website, or his IMBD page https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9096675/.

-Written by Emma Smith ’26