Each fall, NC State students partake in Campus MovieFest, a student film festival that gives its participants only one week to create a five-minute movie. The four teams whose movies score the highest, known as Jury Award Winners, are given the opportunity to screen their movies at the CMF grand finals. In recent years one team has managed to break the top four not once, but two years in a row. With their quick, quirky and odd humor, it’s the Jokey Edgars.
Composed of 13 members, 10 of whom go to NC State, the Jokey Edgars is a student film group whose two comedy videos, “Jokey Edgars” and “Pulling Strings,” won at the 2014 and 2015 NC State Campus MovieFest finals. The first video, from which the film team gets its name, is about a group of famous Edgars throughout history such as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and painter Edgar Degas. When one of their group members passes, the Edgars begin interviewing Edgar Allen Poe as a replacement but want to make sure he is jokey enough for the group.
“The first year around, we filmed ‘Jokey Edgars’ more for fun than for the competition,” said Patrick Povinelli, a senior at NC State and one of the founding members of Jokey Edgars. “We went to the finale, where Campus MovieFest screens the top 16 films and announces the top four, and expected to maybe get screened, but definitely not to get into the top four.”
Povinelli played Edgar Degas in “Jokey Edgars.” Povinelli said that when the video won, he was speechless on stage. Povinelli said he and the Jokey Edgars’ team captain, Augustus (Gus) Vieweg, a junior studying electrical and computer engineering, first came up with the idea for their first video while attending an improv show.
“The improvisers played this game where they got initials from an audience member and made up a game based on that. The initials were JE, and one of the improvisers conceived the name ‘Jokey Edgars,’ which would be a game about guys named Edgar who told jokes,” Povinelli said. “It became an inside joke of ours for the months to come, and we always imagined Jokey Edgars as a sitcom-style TV show. Eventually, Gus found out about Campus MovieFest and knew it was his excuse to make something of the ridiculous idea that was Jokey Edgars.”
In addition to writing the script for “Jokey Edgars” with his brother Max, Augustus Vieweg also composed a sitcom theme song that takes up the first minute of the video.
“Every composition in ‘Jokey Edgars’ was made by me, even the singing in the theme song,” Vieweg said. “Some music in ‘Pulling Strings’ was royalty-free, but for the most part, I composed.”
Vieweg described Campus MovieFest as an accessible film festival because it lends out equipment for filming as well as computers and editing software. Vieweg also said the week deadline is good at getting him and his team to focus but that it is also quite challenging.
“We never have enough time,” Vieweg said. “Shooting and editing gets extremely intensive with that condition, on top of working a part-time job and being a full-time engineering student.”
Vieweg said “Jokey Edgars” was rather easy to make, with one long eight-hour shoot, a few random shoots and about eight hours of editing. The team’s second movie “Pulling Strings,” however, was much more challenging.
“Pulling Strings” is a movie about two detectives chasing down a master ventriloquist who can make people believe that his puppets are real. The movie parodies the noir style of filmmaking and is filled with the tropes one can find in such movies, including sexism, twists, a detective who dislikes his partner, a narration and some fast-paced editing.
The movie pays homage to the 1940s American film noir, “Murder, My Sweet.” Spivey Bricks, the main character of “Pulling Strings,” played by Povinelli, imitates the main character of the classic film.
“We probably spent about 75 hours in pre-production, 30 hours of shooting and 15 hours of editing for “Pulling Strings,” Vieweg said. “To keep the drive and energy up, as well as maintain a fun and focused atmosphere during that time is also tough, but the cast and crew I had were so dedicated. I could not have asked for anything more from them.”
Campus MovieFest rules allow for pre-production to be done for a movie before the week of the contest but any filming or editing must be done in the week. This gave the Jokey Edgar team time to create puppets, find costumes and locations and decide on a script before the contest started.
“The hardest thing for me was not smiling,” Povinelli said. “It’s very hard to separate yourself from your character, and when a lot of things make you laugh but not your character, you can’t laugh. Filming takes a lot of patience and can be very difficult if you can’t control yourself.”
The Jokey Edgars’ videos can be viewed on the Campus MovieFest’s website. Both Vieweg and Povinelli said they are excited to submit to Campus MovieFest for the third time next fall, and while they don’t have any concrete plans, they want to try and participate in other film festivals outside of NC State.
