The inaugural Triangle Campus Film Festival will take place Wednesday 7-9 p.m. in the James B. Hunt Library Auditorium. The Festival is sponsored and organized by the Video Production Society at N.C. State.
Formerly known as the N.C. State Film Club, the Video Production Society became an official club this year. The club offers students a place to find fellow film production enthusiasts and a chance to make a project idea come to life.
Sam Mazany, a senior in communication and president of the Video Production Society, said the name change has helped define the group. Instead of people coming in to watch movies, the group has helped members expand their film-production resumes. Rather than work on one project as a group, members present ideas and find partners to produce a project, Mazany said.
“We meet up and help work on each other’s projects,” Mazany said. “No one person can make a really good film. You need to be working with a lot of people.”
Mazany said he wanted to create another resource on campus that would easily allow students to express themselves through film.
“I wanted to make the Video Production Society an official organization because it has meant so much for me,” Mazany said. “I went from not working on any projects to making three different films in the past year. I wanted to leave something that when I left they would have better venues to go through.”
After working at and submitting projects to Campus MovieFest at N.C. State, Mazany said several members of the Video Production Society wanted another film outlet with fewer restrictions,
“We wanted to open the festival up to a wider audience and allow people to have more time to work on projects,” Mazany said.
Awards are not being given at the festival. The purpose of the festival is to showcase the work of all participants involved. Triangle Campus Film Festival submissions were allowed to be up to 10 minutes long instead of MovieFest’s five minute cut-off.
The Festival also accepted submissions of productions made in previous years and gave students at other university campuses the opportunity to submit their work. Other universities involved included UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, Appalachian State and UNC-Charlotte.
Mazany said his initial fear of not having enough material for the Festival was quickly forgotten after receiving more than 50 submissions. With the limited time of the Festival, the Society picked 14 films including music videos, comedies, dramas and documentaries.
In addition to the films, Sarah Stein, an associate professor of Communication, will be speaking briefly at the Festival. Between the breaks, the films’ production teams will be invited to the stage to talk about their projects, Mazany said.
Mazany said he and the rest of the Video Production Society members have diligently invested time into making this Festival a success.
“We put a lot of work into making this great,” Mazany said. “One member, Ayanna Seals, has been great with organizing. Everybody in the Production Society has been great and has been working really hard to make this the best that it can be.”
