Noisy chewers, serendipity and self-loathing were explored in some of the 12 student films entered in the College of Communication Student Assembly’s film festival, “Your Take: BU Student Short Film Festival” at BU Central on Monday.
Students created their own short films that were limited to only 10 minutes with no explicit language and activity.
COMSA’s current Vice President of Public Relations Christine Warner helped coordinate the second annual film festival.
“It is a great opportunity to see how short films would do with an audience,” Warner said. “Students get feedback from professors and the chance to see how receptive other BU students react to their work.”
The short films included silent, thriller and comedy movies.
Although COMSA has sponsored similar events in the past, “Your Take” gives the audience a chance to participate in the voting and choose their top three films, Warner said. The winners received Best Buy gift cards and iPod Nanos.
This year’s grand prize winner was COM sophomore Kate Llona’s film “Eat Me.” Her film, which incorporated only the sounds of eating, showed the main character getting distracted and frustrated by a girl in class eating loudly.
“‘Eat Me’ was inspired by a real life situation of someone who brought an entire burrito to class,” Llona said. “My first movie was about getting lost on the fifth floor of the College of Arts and Sciences, so this one also expressed the stresses and little things in life.”
“Dilemma” by COM senior Javier Meléndez won first place, “It’s the Little Things” by COM freshmen Ethan Geron, Forest Lin, Bryan Sih, and Andrew Stieglitz won second place and “Edward” by COM sophomore Erik Hirichsen won third place.
COM freshman and one of the second place winners Andrew Stieglitz contributed to “It’s the Little Things” as the Director of Photography. The film follows the main character, Forest Lin, whose life is dictated by the fate of small details that bring him back to the girl, Abbie Greene, whom he meets running in a park.
“All of us always wanted to create a film regardless of submitting it into a festival,” Stieglitz said. “We all worked for hours on the film doctoring it and I also worked on the editing to make sure to define the important details of the movie.”
Hirichsen said he created “Edward” for his production class, but it was not his first film that he has submitted.
“‘Edward’ is about a guy who just hates everything and doesn’t do anything to change it,” Hirichsen said. “I edited it on the program Avid and it was the first time I showed one of my student films.”
This year, two professors from the Department of Film and Television made up the festival’s panel, which helped chose the festival’s winners. Charles Merzbacher, an associate professor of film, and John Bernstein, director of the screenwriting program, chose the grand prize winner who received an iPad and whose film featured will be featured the COM website.
“I think it’s important to support student filmmaking especially a student-run event,” Merzbacher said. “Many of the films were done for the Productions 1 class so it was impressive how few of the movies had dialogue, yet still did well within the limitations.”
“Student Shorts,” butv10’s new program, will feature all four of the winners’ films at the end of the month.
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