By Amy Eisen, News Correspondent
The glamour of Hollywood filmmaking is once again coming to Northeastern. Campus MovieFest (CMF), the world’s largest student film festival, is back on campus this week for the eighth year in a row.
Launched 12 years ago by four Emory University students, the festival has grown to be a global event. It is the only film festival that lends equipment, as well as support and training, to a specific type of burgeoning filmmaker – the college student. CMF is involved with more than 75 universities, including seven in the United Kingdom. Since the festival was founded, more than 400,000 students have been given the means to make a movie.
CMF gives students all the equipment they need to make a film – video cameras, laptops, editing software – for free. In addition to the equipment, students who sign up online will get one week to make their movie.
The films must be less than five minutes long and are judged in two main genres: comedy and drama. The films must be completed by Tuesday, March 19, at which point they will be judged by a panel of Northeastern students and staff. The top three films, in the categories of Best Picture, Best Comedy and Best Drama, move on to the international competition in Hollywood.
CMF awards a variety of prizes to the Hollywood winners, including $30,000 cash, a 12-month memberships to Adobe Creative Cloud and Hollywood pitch meetings with industry workers. Some films even get showcased at the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner and on Virgin Atlantic in-flight entertainment.
Last year, senior business major Andrew Zenn and his team won several awards for their film “Lily,” which was featured on Virgin Airline flights.
“The Hollywood competition was incredible,” he said. “Our entire team was fortunate enough to travel to the event. One of the highlights was the entire day of industry workshops with professional directors, writers, producers and more – it was an unreal experience.”
Eight years ago, NUTV began working with CMF to bring the festival to Northeastern. “Every year since then, CMF has taken the initiative to reach out to us and begin the process of planning the event,” NUTV president Laura Sims, a middler communications major, said.
“I think it’s natural for NUTV, a student organization focused on student-made productions, to team up with an organization like CMF, that gives our students so many opportunities to receive acknowledgement for their work,” Sims said.
While Northeastern has no filmmaking major, there are a variety of related majors and concentrations within the College of Arts, Media and Design. The combined major options of Interactive Media and Cinema and the communications major’s media studies concentration all give students the opportunity to learn about the world of movies, television and media.
In addition, Sims said CMF has a collaborative and unifying nature. “So often, production students really just make their work for themselves because they have an idea, but CMF gives students a chance to take their ideas, work and videos a step further. Students have a chance for friendly competition and ultimately the chance to be recognized and rewarded for their hard work.”
Previous Northeastern participants said they enjoyed the opportunity, especially those who made it to the Hollywood competition.
CMF allows students with varying amount of filmmaking experience to pursue their interests. Zenn, for example, had been making videos for 10 years, but other students, such as senior cinema and communications dual major Elena Guy, were just starting to realize their interest in filmmaking and used CMF to create their own videos for the first time.
“It was definitely a rush,” she said. “Going through literally the entire movie-making process in a week, from idea to script to location scouting to shooting and editing, and I definitely enjoyed seeing it all come together in such a short time. But in the week of actually doing it, there were many sleepless nights and long days.”
The hard work seemed to pay off, as Guy’s movie “Colorblind” took Campus Best Drama last year, and was one of five nominees for Best Drama at the Hollywood competition.
Every Northeastern student has the opportunity to participate in Campus MovieFest. With a little talent and luck, it could be anyone’s movie up on the silver screen.
