(published SB Indie 02/01/07)
An Inside Look at SBIFF’s Student Filmmaking Contests
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is an especially exciting time for young filmmakers and screenwriters — and not just because they might hear Will Smith speak or bump into Sacha Baron Cohen at Java Jones. Thanks to the 10-10-10 Student Filmmaking and Screenwriting competitions, Santa Barbara high school and college students have a chance to actually participate in the festival and, with help from professional mentors, in the film industry. In fact, last year’s addition of the Screenwriting Competition to the four-year-old Filmmaking Competition makes the process even more of a real-thing-in-training than it originally was.
This is how it works: Santa Barbara high schools and colleges held internal competitions to select the five best screenwriters and filmmakers from their institution. From those submissions (65 writers and 30 filmmakers this year), a judging panel chose five for each contest from each school level. First, the writers were paired with industry mentors and given Grimm Brothers fairytales to adapt into 10-page scripts. Next, those scripts were passed on to filmmaker finalists, whose responsibility it was to turn them into 10-minute films on a 10-day production schedule.
And just like in the real film business, the writers and directors engaged in varying degrees of collaboration: some writers were finished when they handed their scripts over, while others worked with directors on rewrites up until the last day of shooting. Since scripts are judged separately from the films made from them, the writers don’t necessarily have to be that involved.
“My name is going to be up on the screen as the writer,” said Charles Heining, a 21-year-old Brooks Institute of Photography student who worked closely with the directing finalist, 24-year-old City College student Dylan Penev, on his adaptation of Cinderella. Some of the changes Penev requested, said Heining, were cutting down scenes for time and changing the Fairy Godfather character from a gangster to an effeminate gay man. But Heining didn’t mind. “I’m not squeamish about cutting my own stuff,” he said. “And ultimately, [the film] is [Penev’s] vision, so I figured I should be trying to make it a collaboration.”
It seems the collaborations with the most learning potential, though, are those between students and mentors. Dos Pueblos High School student Alex Dunn said Jeff Arch (who wrote Sleepless in Seattle) was a great help with his screenplay adaptation of Hansel and Gretel into a story about a media mogul, his kids, and their evil stepmother. For Levi Michaels, an 18-year-old San Marcos student (and Indy contributor), working with Robert Michael Lewis (Kung Fu, The Invisible Man) was invaluable. “I would tell him my idea and he would say, ‘Yeah, you could do this to make it better, or you could this or this,’” said Michaels, who adapted Little Red Riding Hood as a story about a high school student who sleeps with her math teacher to get into college. “That was a big help. … He filled in the gaps for me.” In fact, it’s this experience that has inspired Michaels to seek a career in the film industry.
All 10 films will be screened, and all winners announced, at 1 p.m. on Sunday, February 4 at the Marjorie Luke Theatre. The winning films in both the high school and college categories also will be screened during the festival’s closing ceremonies at the Arlington Theatre later that night.
Interesting to know.
Posted by: Misty | October 22, 2008 at 02:24 PM