First student film festival getting ready to roll
FIRST EVENT SCHEULED FOR LATER THIS YEAR
A new event is arriving in southern Alberta this year to celebrate new methods of communication for students through visual stimulation.
The first ever southern Alberta Student Film Festival will be taking place in May and a a call recently went out to Grade 7 to 12 pupils within the geographical zone six range in southern Alberta. That includes the Holy Spirit Catholic, Livingstone Range, Horizon, Westwind, Palliser Regional, Prairie Rose division, and Medicine Hat School districts.
“The whole idea of this student film festival is to provide students with the opportunity to showcase their work in video literacy,” says Chad Kuzyk, Director of Learning and Innovation.
“We think of video as a way to communicate, demonstrate knowledge and thoughts and a great way to showcase them all.”
The idea, which was born with a vision to bring to life collaborations between staff, students, industry experts and university expertise both locally and globally, after almost a year of conversation was finally made into a reality this winter. After the call was put out this year with a deadline of April 22 for submission of a 10-to-20 second clip/trailer, students have several options when looking at participating in the event.
The festival will see the implementation of several events that students can get involved with to create and share their passions, adventures and creativity through the lens of a camera with audiences.
The event offers a slew of ways for students to get involved with their creative sides this semester.
“We’ve made this as inclusive as we possibly can,” says Kuzyk.
“It’s a great opportunity to create video literacy and see students excited and engaged in that process. It’s something we’re all excited about. There are lots of opportunity with partnerships here with the University of Lethbridge and industry professionals that we’re working with to provide workshops to teach kids how to do pre and post production.”
Besides the original film submission, the other elements of this year’s festival include three workshops, offered for free to students that cover preproduction, producing the body of the film and post-production elements, including editing picture and sound to create a complete project.
The “Film in 48 Hours” session, is the other element being offered to all students from zone six in grades 10, 11 and 12. This session will see a slightly different process, one that gives all the pupils involved a prop, theme and equipment and 48 hours to write, shoot and produce a film with a maximum length of 10 minutes.
All of these films along with other entries from students involved in the festival will be showcased at the Galt Museum during itsexhibition and gala on May 4 with awards taking place for winning films at the end of the night.
With each school division sharing the fees for this new festival, all students hoping to be involved can do so with no entry fee in place, which Kuzyk says is all part of the plan to make this event as inclusive as possible, so that all students can enjoy the social networking gala and the experience that is making their own motion pictures.