“We really were the kids that went into the backyard and put cardboard boxes on our head and filmed it,” said Michael Molina, CC ’10 and co-founder of Project Bluelight. “We were the kids in your English class in high school that made a film and it’s like, ‘Great. Way to not write an essay.’”
Project Bluelight, which was formed this past fall, is only one of several groups designed for Columbia students who wish to try their hand at filmmaking. Festivals such as the Columbia University National Undergraduate Film Festival display work from across the country on Columbia’s campus, and mtvU’s Best Film On Campus competition may send a Columbia student to Universal City, Calif.for the MTV Movie Awards—having made it through two rounds of competition to be one of the final five contenders, School of the Arts student Jasmin Tekiner only needs to become one of the final two filmmakers to win the coveted trip. Two other festivals, Campus MovieFest and the Ivy Film Festival, both label themselves the “World’s Largest Student Film Festival.” Clearly, students demand platforms for their work, but with all of these competing venues, how do filmmakers decide on the best route for promoting their craft?
This recent explosive interest in student filmmaking—the interest necessary to maintain so many separate festivals—has to do with the massive new popularity of outlets like YouTube. “YouTube’s a whole different generation,” said Jeff Schwartz, CC ’10 and co-founder of Project Bluelight. “There are so many films coming out now. People’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.”
Two aspiring filmmakers, Rachel Mersky, BC ’11, and Sarah Dooley, BC ’11, found success on YouTube, where they attracted over 50,000 viewers after the Web site featured their sketch series, AndSarah, on the home page. Sarah Dooley, who recently starred in the 2008 Varsity Show, wrote the scripts for the first three episodes over winter break. “We wanted to try filming one day, so then we did it,” Dooley recalled. “It’s cool to write it, and then do it the way I envisioned it.” Mersky is no stranger to established film festivals on Columbia’s campus. “I submitted two shorts to the [Columbia University National] Undergraduate Film Festival. I got an honorable mention for one film, and I submitted the first episode of AndSarah. They didn’t like it.” But these obstacles don’t set Mersky back. “I think it’s fun. It makes me more accomplished. In the future, I want to be a filmmaker.”
Other filmmakers seem more skeptical of the proliferation of student film festivals. “I went to the Columbia Undergraduate National Film Festival and those kinds of things, and the quality of film hasn’t been very high,” Evan Omi, CC ’11, said. “I thought, ‘Oh, I should try to do better than this.’” One of the filmmakers behind Boyfriend Material, Omi won the Comedy category of Columbia’s Campus MovieFest, though his short did not make the national finals, which screened at the Hudson Theatre in Times Square during the first week of May. “A guy had a flier, he was handing them out in Café 212,” Omi said regarding his decision to participate in the festival. “I thought we were going to crank this out, it’s gonna be shitty as hell, but like, whatever, it’ll be fun to do. As it turns out, it wins the festival.”
Many of these filmmakers have reservations about the technology available to them as undergraduate students. “I had to buy a mini shotgun mike to put on top of my camcorder,” Mersky said. “On YouTube, the quality is horrible, but it’s actually pretty good on my computer.” Omi seemed to have brighter hopes for the future. “A film, unlike a novel or a song,” Omi said, “takes so much manpower and technological know-how. I think as technology increases, hopefully in the next three or four years, it’ll be easy to make a reasonably priced good movie.”
Many of these budding talents have come together for Project Bluelight, which produced a short film with the help of roughly 50 students. “We came on at the beginning of the year realizing there were several film production groups,” Molina said. “In terms of production value, Project Bluelight is a different thing. But if it’s a big-scale production, you’re going to have talent. If it’s a $10 production, you’re going to have talent.”
“The experience of a larger-scale film production,” Schwartz continued, “has entirely different standards and practices than four guys with a camera. It puts people together.”