Students from Missouri prepare films for annual Fault Line Film Festival

For the past four years, the Fault Line Film Festival at Southeast Missouri State University has showcased a variety of filmmaking talents from students throughout Missouri.

From comedy to drama, suspense to animation, the film festival has encouraged college students from across the state to create original works that are 10 minutes or less in length.

This year, the festival inspired Southeast students Christopher Bonner, Clint Hess and Jake Leffler to take an inventive angle and think outside of the box with their creation of a 3D short film.

The three seniors, all computer and multimedia graphics majors, began production this summer and took on the daunting task of creating an animated world from the ground up for their film.

The group found inspiration for their post-apocalyptic short in current sci-fi films, taking note of the special effects and sound.

"Now that we've gotten more classes under our belt, we can finally dish out what we've learned," Hess said.

Bonner said the group had not competed in the festival before because he felt they were not prepared as a group.

"This is one of those bucket list things before we leave SEMO," Bonner said.

Leffler said the group had to look outside of class materials for help with the animation in their film. They used the program Cinema 4D, which is an application that helped with 3D character modeling, animation and rendering as well as Autodesk Maya, which is the animation program the group used to create their film.

The group gained information necessary for the creation of their film from an advanced graphics class taught by Jeremy Griffin, a professor in the Department of Industrial and Engineering Technology.

Griffin has participated in the event for the past two years and will be a film festival judge for the second time this year.

"Every department that had interest in the festival got to have at least one faculty member on the committee to determine categories and to run the whole show," Griffin said. "Becoming a judge is part of that also. This is the fourth year. I started in year three."

Griffin said the committee is anticipating future growth in entries, sizes of categories and the range of states from which submissions will be allowed. Entries are accepted from all universities throughout the state of Missouri.

"We send emails to every department of every Missouri university that we think might be interested to share," Griffin said. "We usually get probably about, I would say, a good 30 percent are from out of SEMO, but 70 percent are SEMO entries."

Fred Jones, a professor in the Department of Mass Media, is also a judge for the festival and has been since its creation in 2010.

"We primarily get entries from SEMO, but we also have gotten entries this year from UMKC," Jones said.

Entries for the festival were due on Nov. 4, and the films were judged on Nov. 11.

Griffin said all the judges met in Rose Theater on Monday and sat down and reviewed more than 20 submissions, one by one. The group used a rating system to pick the films they thought deserved to win each category. He said the process took around five or six hours total.

"We have criteria that we judge it [each film] on: quality, acting quality, picture quality, sound quality," Griffin said. "There's a lot of criteria that goes to it, it's not just like 'Oh, I like that one, I know those students' kind of thing. There are criteria to it."

Jones said that there is one winning film for each separate category and that if a film does not win a specific award but shows merit, that group could receive an honorable mention from the judges, along with a monetary prize.

The categories are Best of Festival, Best Drama, Best Comedy, Best Suspense or Mystery, Best Animation, the Judges' Award, the Audience Choice Award and the honorable mentions, if any. All winners are chosen by the judges before the event, except for the Audience Choice Award, which allows the audience at the film screening to choose its favorite film out of the entire group of entries.

Griffin said he likes the event because it is an opportunity for students to support each other and appreciate the creativity they have to offer.

"Whether they win or lose, they all come and have a fantastic time," Griffin said. "There's food and drinks. They all get excited cheering each other on, being happy with each other. They all get to dress up, and it's just a big party."

The public film screening will be at 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 22, at Rose Theater. It will feature a red carpet style entrance with a backdrop for photos to be taken and will have the feel of a formal awards gala.

Jones said he likes the festival because it allows students from all over campus to showcase their talents, whether they are typically involved with filmmaking or not.

"The cool thing about this festival is that it's not just TV film majors or mass comm. majors," Jones said. "It involves students in theater and dance and really any department. We've had people enter this festival from all different departments on campus, so it's really a very collaborative festival."

Each year, $4,000 in award money from the sponsoring departments is given to the students who win each category, with the best of festival piece winning $1,000, and each other winner receiving $250.

An award ceremony will be held at noon on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall at the River Campus. Clips from the winning films will be shown, and each winner will give an acceptance speech.

Dave Rutherford, a well-known cinematographer from St. Louis, will be the keynote speaker at the award ceremony.

There is no admission cost for either the award ceremony or the film screening, and all students and others are welcome to attend both events.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Mass Media, the Department of Theatre and Dance, the Department of Industrial and Engineering Technology, the Earl and Margie Holland School of Visual and Performing Arts, the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the College of Liberal Arts and the Office of the Provost.

For more information about the Fault Line Film Festival visit www.semo.edu/faultline.