Attendees watch student films at Ackerman Grand Ballroom during the annual Campus MovieFest on Thursday. Teams were loaned equipment for the event, which is held at college campuses nationwide. The UCLA event, the first stop of the tour on the West Coast, was co-sponsored by the Campus Events Commission. The three winning films were sent to San Francisco to compete in the regional semi-finals.
If you walked past Ackerman Grand Ballroom Thursday night, you would hear the “oohs” and “aahhs” amid the laughs and shouts of congratulations, as it was the night of Campus MovieFest’s red carpet finale. The genres of the films screened varied from comedies to intense dramas to light-hearted romance. Of the top 16 films screened, three were chosen as Best Picture, Best Comedy and Best Drama, which went to “The Butterfly King,” “Pantomime” and “Life (in V Minutes),” respectively. The award winners, along with a wild card pick, will move on to the 2009 Western Regional Grand Finale, which will be on Nov. 14 in San Francisco.
Best Picture
“The Butterfly King”
Best Picture was awarded to “The Butterfly King,” made by a student improv group called the Wait List. Fourth-year theater student Chris Reinacher played the role of Bum Bum Badger in the film short and was awarded the award for Best Actor by Campus Events Commission.
“The Butterfly King” dives into the world and drama within an acting group, centering on Reinacher’s character, who seems to have been broken up with by a girl now dating the lead actor. The five-minute film is filled with everything from wit and humor to outlandish makeup and costumes to musicals.
As if to give more emphasis to the improv genre that the group identifies with, Reinacher described a major last minute change that evidences the improv qualities.
“I wrote a script and at 1 a.m. on Thursday, we decided to scrap that script and we all put this together,” said Reinacher. “On Friday night, we wrote it over again. Saturday and Sunday, we filmed. Monday, we edited and it was turned in on Tuesday.”
“I am really excited to go to San Francisco with all my friends,” Reinacher said. “This is how we met last year.” According to Reinacher, the group the Wait List was created because of participation in last year’s festival, when the people from the Best Comedy and Best Picture groups met and started making films, which eventually collaborated into the improv group.
Best Comedy
“Pantomime”
The award for Best Comedy went to “Pantomime,” a film written and directed by fourth-year film student Michael Barryte, with major help from fourth-year film students Adam Petke and Ryan Finnerty. In addition to winning Best Comedy, the film was awarded Best Actress by Campus Events Commission.
“Pantomime” explores a comical circumstance where two of the four friends featured become obsessed with pantomime.
With each passing minute, the couple increasingly involve pantomime in their lives while their two friends watch from the sidelines, slightly shocked.
Barryte first thought of the idea for the film because of an improv group he belongs to off-campus.
According to Barryte, when acting out their scenes, members of the group had to do space work or use pantomimes to make the scene more realistic.
“I was just noticing that some of the people were really, really good and they make you feel the environment,” Barryte said. “So, I wondered what would happen if something bigger came from that.”
Barryte’s goal for the film this year was to have fun, and for the process to be goofy, fast and enjoyable, so much so that everything was filmed within a three-hour time span after one of the improv group meetings.
“Because they are improvisers, I didn’t have to go directly off the page,” said Barryte.
In fact, Barryte said that the film’s cranberry scene was mostly just ad-libbed and the actors getting into it.
Best Drama
“Life (in V Minutes)”
“Life (in V Minutes),” which was written and directed by fourth-year Asian American studies student Kelly Li, received the award for Best Drama. This is the third time Li has entered CMF and made it into the top 16 featured films, but the first time he has won.
The film short deals with both the happiest and saddest moments in five minutes by exposing an interracial couple’s love consummated by an engagement and another man’s hateful reaction to it.
“It is the most difficult task I have ever done as far as story and genre … I was really inspired by this concept about the unknown and the chaos of life and how it surrounds us,” Li said. “Something about that just really made me want to tell the story about life as this uncontrolled, sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrible thing, and how people seem to be the pawns in the game of life.”
Even though Li and his team of friends and actors went through unexpected stresses, such as the lead actress dropping the part due to an accident hours before filming. It took the team less than 72 hours to finish the movie from start to finish.
However, it is not all about moving up to the Western Regional Grand Finale for Li but more about the story his film conveys.
“For me, it’s not about winning at the finale more than letting people experience something I helped create and hopefully affecting them,” Li said.