Film students from Powell River spent three days in Vancouver immersed in movie making last week while attending the BC Student Film Festival.
The festival, presented by BC Media Educators, was held at Capilano University in North Vancouver from May 9 to 11. Stretched over three days, young filmmakers from around the province attended workshops, film screenings and a gala awards show.
Tony Papa, instructor and mentor at Powell River Digital Film School, considers the annual event, with its rich immersion for students in film and filmmaking, a key experience for his students. All 10 of his current class attended the festival.
The event also has special significance for filmmaker Papa who has been teaching for the last seven years. “It was one of the things that inspired me to get into teaching,” he said.
The creativity of what he saw students producing resonated deeply with him. “It’s not thinking outside the box,” he said, “it’s that there isn’t a box.”
Key for Papa is encouraging students to embrace experimentation and produce stories from their heart to avoid imitation. His classes are “about making your mark, not getting a mark.”
Student films are entered for consideration by a panel of judges prior to the festival and the best are chosen for recognition. Papa has his students complete larger group projects to be entered into the festival.
On the final day of the festival students were brought onto an actual film set in Vancouver “to witness all the aspects of filmmaking that they have been learning about,” said Papa. He added that the experience was “a good learning trip.” Students learned more about cinematography, camera operation, writing scripts and even stunts, he said.
He knew before the festival that his students from last year were going to be recognized for their group project. Veronika Kurz is a 2012 graduate who has just completed her first year of film school at Capilano and lives in Terrace, BC. As director of the student group project, she won first prize in the category of narrative comedy for the five-minute short, Night Shift. It is the story of how gas station attendants Carl and Dave inadvertently help a hapless stickup artist rob their gas station.
This film and others can be viewed on the film school’s website.
