Article including information about how the student film Strayed (directed by Brad Robinson and starring Derek Biddle and Alyssa Mulligan) got selected to appear in the SFO Student Film Festival.
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/venues/2009/04/23/state_theatre_to_screen_winnin.aspx
Posted on April 23, 2009 1:08 AM
FROM SFO TO STARDOM
State Theatre to screen winning student films this weekend
IF YOU GO
What: SFO Student Film Festival
When: Saturday at 7
Where: The State Theatre,
130 W. College Ave.
Details: Tickets are $7.
THE LIST
Joe Mayo - Haram
Mary Anderson - Death by Exterior
Derek Bonner - The Box
Julie Maslak - The Cyclist
Michael DiMattesa - Hail the Lion
Brad Robinson - Strayed
Chris Sterbank - This is Just to Say
Kenny Wu - Serendipity
Greg Hariott - Under
Brandon Hess - Daddy's Girl
Trevon Pegram - The Five Finger Egg Cracking Technique
Kelly Gallagher - The Herstory of the Female Filmmaker
Molly Evans - In Lingo
By Mark Maurer
Collegian Staff Writer
The Chosen Ones
The pressure was on last week for Joe Mayo.
Mayo (senior-film and video) changed the title of his senior film project three times -- from
It Works to
After We Break to
Haram ('Forbidden' in Arabic) -- and revised the basic structure of the plot.
"When you work on something for months and months, you come to the point where you don't even know if it's good anymore," Mayo said. "I'm still happy to have made what we made."
Blind hope was guiding him along until he received a surprising call late Sunday night about his acceptance into the student film festival.
Haram is one of 13 films to be screened at the SFO Student Film Festival on Saturday at the State Theatre,
130 W. College Ave. The annual event organized by the Student Film Organization (SFO) premieres films made by
Penn State students during the 2008-09 academic year.
For the week leading up to the Friday afternoon submission deadline, the Carnegie editing lab was a breeding ground for exhausted college students, trimming and fine-tuning their films into the wee hours of the night. As of Friday morning, Alyssa Fannick, Student Film Organization president, said at least 20 of her peers had not slept in three days.
"It was a pretty haggard-looking bunch," Fannick said.
Only 38 films were submitted this year, a decrease from the typical 50 to 60 films from the past few years (53 were sent in 2008), Fannick said. She attributes the unusually low number to the different structure of junior film narrative projects within the film program. More time was spent on group projects than on individual films this year, she added.
There were also a greater number of HD projects because the film department now has more HD cameras available for students to use.
Fannick, who served as director of photography on a senior film, said she was very proud of her fellow seniors and excited about the list overall.
"It's a very strong lineup, and there was a lot of talent this year," Fannick (senior-film and video) said.
Shot in digital HD, Mayo's film is about a young man named Tom, who, after a failed relationship with a Muslim girl, re-examines his life through a second dreamlike world, which serves as an abstraction of his internal state.
At a late stage in production, feedback from Mayo's classmates from watching clips of the unfinished product prompted him to modify the narrative.
"It became obvious it wasn't working for most people, so we drastically changed the way those two worlds interacted with each other," Mayo said.
Mayo's film featured two actors who are members of the Screen Actors Guild, so there were contractual limitations to how long they could be working at a time. Mayo kept a tight set despite the film shoot feeling a bit rushed. One time, the cameraman had to recalibrate a lens for 15 minutes, but Mayo said they didn't have the time.
Kelly Gallagher (senior-film and video) said her hectic schedule was comparable -- she spent two semesters working on an animated documentary,
The Hirstory of the Female Filmmaker. The film, which was selected for the festival, takes a look at work by women filmmakers dating back to 1896.
"Being a film major, I hadn't learned a lot about women filmmakers in my time here, so I wanted to do some research," Gallagher said.
She said she is proud of herself and her peers who did or did not make it in and exhibited great passion for their respective projects. In the Carnegie editing lab, they kept each other sane.
"Me and my friends were running on adrenaline and energy drinks for days," Gallagher said. "We used to take breaks to watch the sun come up. I'm not even kidding."
How They Were Chosen
When it comes to festival planning, Richie Sherman, faculty adviser for SFO and assistant professor of film and video, is in charge of continuity in the festival from year to year. In his fourth year serving as the SFO faculty adviser, he strives to maintain equality for all in the selection process.
"I make sure everything is run fairly and [the selection process] isn't caught up in personal favors,"
Sherman said. "We certainly don't want people to think there's a bias going on."
This time around, seven people joined the panel of the judges, consisting of community members, film and video alumni, and English or philosophy professors, and are subjected to viewing eight to 10 hours of material, during which SFO officers carted in food and coffee. The task entails narrowing the batch down to 12 to 15 films of varying length that would equate to roughly two hours and 20 minutes of film.
People currently involved in the
Penn State film community are prohibited from being on the judging committee, which is selected by SFO. There are also no repeat judges from year to year, a guideline that
Sherman recommends stays in use.
Sherman sees a change blooming in the years to come that will facilitate the judging process. He expects the film submissions to be posted online so that judges could download and watch them from disparate locations. A collective discussion would subsequently occur over the phone.
"We don't have the manpower or the time right now, but within a year, it's possible,"
Sherman said. "Down the road, I'm hoping we do it more virtual."
Mike Negra, executive director at the State Theatre, has been asked to be a judge for the past three years the event has been held at the venue. He has declined each time because he has been out of town.
This is the festival's third year at the State Theatre, which previously was held in Schwab Auditorium.
Sherman said the "excellent projection and excellent sound" drew a packed crowd each time.
Sherman said the likelihood that a student's film would be selected is substantially higher than it would be at national festivals like the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which has 3,000 submissions.
"The odds are getting insane,"
Sherman said. "This one is competitive too, but the odds are much higher that your work will be shown."
In organizing the festival with SFO, Negra helps the student organizers get through contractual hurdles, and he expects another big turnout for this soufflé of student work.
"They're short, they're sweet, there's a number of them and at least one of them is going to touch you," Negra said.
ArtsEmerson and 
setting, ensemble-work, and more. The students learned new theatre terminology, like “monologue,” “objective,” and “improvisation.” Another word that we delved into was “Metamorphosis,” inspired by the performance of ArtsEmerson’s 
once the students are met with a large audience, they might get cold feet or forget a line. That’s the beauty of live theatre: you never know what may happen. But for me, it doesn’t matter if they are word-perfect or even the next Marlon Brando. It has been a successful experience, and the proof is in the process, not the product. The students crafted their own voices, and we heard what they had to say. And that is an incredible thing.
