The Department of Communication and Journalism in the College of Liberal Arts will be presenting the Jay Sanders Film Festival on Thursday, April 2, 2009, at 7 p.m. in the Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center.
The festival is a yearly event where student filmmakers compete. Finalists who submitted films to the Movie Gallery Student Film Competition will be publicly judged and awarded for their works. Any student at the high school or college level was eligible to submit a film to the festival, as long as the film was made while he/she was a student. Deron Overpeck, director of the festival, described the selection process as being two-tiered: one committee views all of the submissions and selects 5-6 high school films and 8-10 college films to be forwarded to the next round. A second committee then evaluates these films and selects the best to include in the Jay Sanders Film Festival.
Overpeck said that the committee looks for overall quality of the films: clear photography, coherent and creative storyline, believable acting, smooth and consistent editing and clear sound.
"Zombie and Tarantino-inspired crime films seem to be popular genres with student filmmakers," Overpeck said.
Last year in the college competition, 1st place went to Tim Tsai for his film called "Of Love and Race." Second Place went to Brooke Tribble, Allison Bell and Graham Jones for "Harry Potter & the Torrid Love Affair."
"We wrote, shot, edited, and starred in the project," said Tribble. "We were encouraged to have interviews or talking heads throughout the film, which helped the source of our comedy and our deadpan approach. I chose to submit it because our teacher, Hollie Lavenstein encouraged me."
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