Four Years, Eleven Films, One Night

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Author: Martin Cramer & Fanny Texier

Oxy will be rolling out the iconic red carpet from the doors of Thorne Hall this Friday at 7 p.m. in celebration of the annual Senior Film Comps screening. Ten 10-minute, student-produced films will be presented to the public, the last stage of a year-long production process.

“The Thorne Hall screening is an exciting event,” said professor Broderick Fox, head of the film department. He described it as a celebration of the seniors finishing their final projects and proving themselves as capable filmmakers.

Digital production manager Kjell Hilding characterized the screening as an exciting opportunity for the senior film majors. “The goal of the event is to showcase our student filmmakers who have been working on these films for over a year, and in time we’re trying to make this an essential to the calendar, an event like Dance Production,” he said.

The procedure began even before the academic school year had commenced. Students wrote project proposals and the first draft of their scripts over the summer, film major Madison Murphy (senior) said. In the fall, they enrolled in the comps class. They then spent about four weeks working through the pre-production phase, which involved casting, scouting for locations and forming an overall aesthetic plan – all of which they did under strict class deadlines.

Students began shooting in October and were required by the department to be finished at the end of the fall semester. The formal comps class ended with the fall semester, but the students still had to meet a series of deadlines in the spring.

This semester, the students focused their efforts on editing their footage, which entailed working on color correction, sound design and special effects. The final versions of the films were due on April 5.Fortunately, no one had to tackle the project on their own: Cooperation was an integral part of the process for the filmmakers. “[Film comps] celebrates collaboration within the film department. For example, I produced Jeven’s film and he was the cinematographer for mine,” Murphy said.

Film major Jeven Dovey (senior) agreed, and cited the shared history of the film students as the critical groundwork for their strong bonds.

Murphy also lauded the larger Oxy community for assisting the comps students. “It also celebrates collaboration across the campus and the work Oxy students can do together within and outside of the film department,” she said.

The seniors who will be screening their films for the first time this Friday are brimming with excitement for a variety of reasons, but especially because they will finally be seeing each other’s finished films.

“I’m really excited for the screening . . . to see my film and everyone else’s,” Elizabeth Hogdman (senior) said.

Fox hopes that the Senior Film Comps screening will become a springboard for a more developed, all-encompassing series of events that celebrate the work of all the film students. He feels that some students might be deterred from pursuing the critical theory route or less traditional forms of expression because they would not be featured in the Thorne screening. “I am envisioning that next year – in addition to the comps screening – there will be something of a comps week,” which would give more attention to the film students who decided not to produce a traditional film, he said.

He also encourages students to utilize their understanding of film in more independent modes, rather than replicating the established mainstream media style. “The most successful students are those who take the grounding we give them and figure out how to be renegades of a new form of media,” Fox said.

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