This past Tuesday, the crowd was out on the red carpet as eager moviemakers saw their films compete for top honors. Of course this was not the Oscars or Golden Globes, but rather Saint Louis University’s own SLU72 Film Festival.
SLU TV was in charge of the event, which has grown from a freshman-only competition open to biology, communication and performance art majors, to what is now a school-wide contest accepting entries from any group of students.
In keeping with the name of the festival, teams had 72 hours to film and edit their work.
For this year’s competition, there were six such films entered under these conditions, and two films entered outside of the main competition-due to longer production time.
The big winners of the night were With Villainy II: Return of the King for best technical achievement as well as fan favorite, and Pancakes Every Day for best overall. Receiving Billies-a SLU-style Oscar-for acting work were Tom English for Smokin’ Hot
and Stine Zink Kaasgaard for My Man and Stine Pigne.
From goofball comedy to noir-toned drama to gore-fests, SLU student filmmakers inserted a diverse spread of themes and styles into their films.
Even the normally mundane was made entertaining in Rise and Shine, which used clever editing to contrast how students tackle the obstacle of making it to morning classes.
SLUPD, a campus parody of Cops, brought in big laughs lampooning the type of bungling and power-tripping security officers which are thankfully absent on campus.
What each film did have in common was a strong team of SLU students who weren’t afraid to try something new and show it off to their peers.
The duo behind the night’s overall winner, medical school students Geoffrey Hill and Alex Gamble for Pancakes, joined forces for SLU TV’s competition.
They said that there “was not much of a creative outlet in medical school,” and that their film was very “thrown together.” In fact, the twosome learned most of their skills in filming and editing while they rushed to finish before the deadline.
Hill and Gamble’s film, Pancakes, appropriately featured un-simulated bingeing on the Bisquick breakfast. When asked for dietary insight learned after devouring more then 50 pieces of their once-favorite breakfast food, the pair said that “man cannot live on pancakes alone.”
Patrick Wessel, president of SLU TV and judge for the festival, said that he was impressed by this year’s entries and hopes to see more in March for the spring semester’s SLU72. Although he plans to have his own entry, he gave some advice to prospective teams.
“[The judges] would like to see more people go off campus and use the city,” Wessel said.
Cheering on the winners was a full house of SLU students. John Castrelli, member of SLU TV’s executive board, was pleased with how well everything came together. Two-thirds of the entries in the competition were from teams that had never participated before.
“We have been really impressed with all the submissions,” Castrelli said.
Castrelli said that he hopes the creativity of the evening will rub off and encourage audience members to become filmmakers.
The SLU TV executive also wanted to remind the entire student body that SLU TV’s resources are open to them, and anyone with an idea need only to contact them on their website, slutv.slu.edu, for training and to rent filming and editing equipment.
