Filmmakers take a shot at Campus MovieFest contest

Searchlights outside Witherspoon Student Center Sunday night at 7:30 p.m. drew many inside to a crowd of movie-goers gathering in the Campus Cinema for the Campus MovieFest film competition. The world’s largest film festival was back for the second year in a row to present the top 16 student films from N.C. State and to announce the winners in each category that will move on to the Southern Regional Grand Finale in Atlanta.

This year, out of the 109 submissions, Best Picture went to Wishphone, Best Comedy went to “When Ants Strike Back,” Best Drama went to “Bones of Iraq” and the Golden Mobile award went to “A Step Back.”

Josh Fairhurst and Robert Prince, seniors in computer science, are two producers of the winner of Best Picture, “Wishphone,” the tale of two men who discover a phone that grants wishes.

“We didn’t think we had a chance to win in any of the other categories except for the ATT Golden Mobile category. We were ridiculously flabbergasted when we won Best Picture because we didn’t think we had a chance,” Fairhurst said. “We just ran with the phone thing because we wanted to win the phone category. We’ve got enough opportunity to win this category and only this category.”

Prince said he experienced a similar reaction when the two were called up to the stage after the announcement.

“I sat around stumbling for words for the longest time,” Prince said. “I remember going up on stage but I don’t remember what I said.”

Prince, who has worked with Fairhurst before on their WolfTV show Doomstink, said after Fairhurst was convinced to enter the competition by his friends at the television station he approached Prince about helping out.

“He calls me up and tells me we’re doing Campus MovieFest and I’m like… ‘super,'” Prince said.

To create the five minute films in one week, participants were armed with a video camera, an ATT mobile phone and a Macbook laptop. Corey Howard, a sophomore in aerospace engineering, submitted a comedic film about college life.

“I just used the computer for editing only, and I tried to implement the phone but it didn’t have anything to do with the plot so I used it in small parts, nothing too significant. The camera, I just filmed with it,” Howard said.

Sagar Patel, a freshman in First Year College, said he went to the event because he heard he was in one of the videos.

“It was well put together,” Patel said of the event overall, “The prizes, free popcorn and especially the lights outside Witherspoon attracted a lot of people. The videos were really nice; some of them had the potential to be full story lines.”

Before the viewing started and in between films, the event organizers gave out door prizes, including five iPod shuffles, an Elgado TV tuner, T-shirts, an iPod nano and Apple’s Final Cut Studio. Candace Knotts, a junior in plant biology and horticulture, won an iPod shuffle and caught a T-shirt.

“I didn’t plan on [attending] but I was walking back from the gym and I saw the searchlights and decided to see it,” Knotts said. “It was awesome to see the creativity; it was a chance to see what everyone has been doing. This is just something people do for themselves. You don’t usually see a lot of visual film things creativity-wise.”

Lee Xiong, a freshman in biomedical engineering, attended the event even after missing the deadline to submit a video of his own.

“There were some videos in there that didn’t make sense to me and some of them I thought were predictable. Others, you just don’t know what will happen. The Wishphone one, everything was a surprise,” Xiong said. He said Wishphone was his favorite of the 16 shown. “My favorite video was the one that actually won Best Picture. The funny one is always the one that wins, but the one that looked the most realistic was the CSI one. The acting wasn’t the greatest, but the recording of it was really good.”

Knotts said her favorite film was the winner of Best Drama, “Bones of Iraq,” which highlighted the filmmaker’s Iraqi heritage and how she was treated differently because out of all her family, she was the only one with Middle Eastern features.

“It reminded me of my little sister. She’s half-black but she’s got Latino features,” Knotts said. “People sometimes automatically assume she speaks Spanish.”

Patel said that as a part of the student body, students should support events like College MovieFest.

“It’s just a good outlook on our college. I take a lot of pride in what our school does; I like to see what other students are involved in,” Patel said. “I plan on coming to future Campus MovieFest events because this one had a good impression on what our students can do in the film industry. I want to see the results of that next year.”