Campus Movie Fest: Two students stories

March 16, 2017

Campus Movie Fest is the largest student film festival in the world and brings a team to campus that provides resources for students to produce a 5 minute film in 7 days. This was the first time they came to Clemson University. Many ClemsonGC students participated in the Campus Movie Fest this semester and here are two students– Madison Williams’ and Brad Cohen’s– stories.

Madison Williams filming with Bryson during the making of her film 136.

CMF by Madison Williams, Class of 2018

I would like to start off by thanking the individuals that brought Campus Movie Fest to Clemson. As a University without a film school, there are so many students eager to work in video production and CMF brought people out of the woodworks from all different majors and of all ages. Personally, I probably would not have set aside the time to produce my documentary had it not been for Campus Movie Fest.

The story I decided to tell was about a lifelong Clemson fan named Bryson Carter. Anyone who has the chance to listen to him speak will immediately realize what an amazing human being he is. To hear his story, check out the documentary I produced for CMF entitled 136:

The opportunity to participate in the largest student film festival in the world was such a valuable experience for me. Bryson’s story is something that I feel very passionate about and I had wanted to tell his story ever since I met him at the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix this past year. CMF gave me the opportunity to dedicate one week to make the documentary happen. Producing a film in one week was stressful, but more importantly, it was extremely rewarding.

Madison flying the drone to capture footage in Death Valley.

There were several obstacles on shoot day – the biggest one being lack of time. I had put so many hours into planning and I wanted everything to work seamlessly, but we all know it never happens that way. I only had four hours with Bryson on the Saturday before our films were due to shoot his interview and b-roll. That scared me. His story deserved to be told, but my biggest fear was that I didn’t have enough time to execute it the way I saw it in my head. Panic struck  when the Ronin stabilizer failed to work.

Throughout my stressful moments, I had failed to notice Bryson’s emotions. When I finally glanced up at him as we were prepping for his interview in the West End Zone of Death Valley, I could see the joy on his face. Although he could not see it, he was facing out toward the field. He was enjoying every moment of the process and that is when I realized I should be doing the same, instead of stressing that everything wasn’t going as planned.

Instead of wasting more time trying to get the equipment to work, I decided to start shooting. I set my frame rate to 60 fps and hoped for the best. In the end, I liked the look of handheld better than if I had stabilized my shots because it fit with the mood of the documentary.

While there were surely aspects of the shoot that I learned from and would improve next time, I am extremely proud of the final piece and even more proud of Bryson for his ability to tell his story. Bryson reiterated his thoughts and emotions perfectly and focused on everything he was thankful for. He made it very difficult for me to cut down the footage to 5 minutes. He had so many wonderful things to say.

At the CMF Premier, Bryson was unable to be there, but his girlfriend Tara came and sat with my family and friends. When the host announced that 136 had won the last of the four jury awards, we were all just ecstatic for Bryson. As the film moves on to the next round of screening at Terminus in Atlanta in June, I look forward to having Bryson’s story reach even more people. His dream is to end up in Clemson, and as he puts it “just to live and work in Clemson. There’s nothing like it. This is the best place. This is where I want to be.”

Brad Cohen and Bekah Shaffer who created Cookies Fix Everything, one of the top four entries to Clemson Campus MovieFest

CMF by Brad Cohen, class of 2017

As cliché as it is to say, it really is incredible to see how much you can learn and grow in the span of a year. Around this time last March, I had just wrapped up a video project for my GC3400 class. This was the first time that I had ever done anything even remotely video-related and I absolutely, immediately fell in love with it. That project ending up leading to a position with Clemson Athletics working as a student videographer under Nik Conklin and Jonathan Gantt. With their guidance I was able to practice and improve skills in composition and storytelling, and decided that I wanted to go into the documentary industry to tell the stories of people whose voices deserve to be heard… So, fast-forward to January, when it was announced that Campus MovieFest would be coming to Clemson, I saw it as an incredible opportunity to push myself further towards my career goals.

Campus MovieFest is a student film festival that gives participants one week to shoot and edit a five-minute-or-less movie of any genre. Because of my job with Clemson Athletics, the one-week deadline was nothing new to me—most of our game-related videos for social media are typically expected to be complete within an hour or two of the event ending. The hard part for me was finding a topic that would be meaningful while also pushing myself to try something new.

With all the craziness happening in our current political environment, I decided to make a documentary that could shed a light on the positive impact that the Muslim community has on this country. I visited Clemson’s local mosque and found a family willing to tell their story. On the first official day of the CMF competition, I went out to the Village Bakery in Pendleton with my team partners Bekah Shaffer and Greg Freeman. There we met the owners, Abdul and Amani Karkour, who came to the United States from Syria over twenty years ago. Bekah, Greg, and I knew that our overall goal for this film was to focus on the message that all people—regardless of race, religion, or nationality—deserve compassion and respect. But we were unsure of the best way to approach this project and clearly deliver this message. Ultimately, we decided to let our conversations with the Karkours dictate the tone that we would go for.

Fortunately, Abdul and Amani are two of the absolute nicest people and were willing to help us in any way possible. They allowed us to come in the next morning before they opened to film b-roll of the bakery, and we agreed to do the interview on the following evening.

Looking back on the process, the interview was probably the most difficult part of this project due to how much stress went into making sure we had the right lighting, angles, and audio. We used a Sony a7sii with a 50mm lens recording in 4k as our primary camera, a Sony a7s with a telephoto 70-200mm for our low angle secondary camera, and a Panasonic G7 for a side shot that we ended up not using in post-production due to poor exposure. Our light setup consisted of two LED panels on camera left and natural light from a large window on camera right. For our audio we used a boom mic positioned directly over and between the subjects that fed to an external receiver.

Abdul and Amani, like always, were incredible and gave us honest, passionate, and well-articulated answers to every question we asked, and wrapped up the interview by bringing out and introducing us to their five children. With the interview finished, and with two days left in the competition, Bekah and I went out to shoot our last few establishing shots of the bakery and surrounding town, and from then on it was all editing. After a sleepless night and a close call on the deadline, Cookies Fix Everything was complete.

Cookies Fix Everything from Brad Cohen on Vimeo.

The viewing party took place three days after submissions were due, and those were easily three of the longest days I have ever suffered through. Because this was Campus MovieFest’s first time at Clemson, we were only expecting 150-200 people to show up to the screening party, but over 500 movie enthusiasts came out to support their friends and family who participated in the competition!

Fifty films were submitted, but only the top 16 were shown, with the Top 4 videos were announced at the end. It was such a fun event and this many people participating in Clemson’s first year hosting CMF makes me incredibly excited to see what it will be like in the years to come. Some of my absolute favorite films shown that night were Kyle (comedy), Catch (horror), The Interview (comedy/thriller), and Days of Sweater (indie/comedy).

After the Top 16 movies were shown, Silver Tripod Awards were given out for categories such as Best Actor and Best Director. Cookies Fix Everything was awarded a Silver Tripod for Best Editing and went on to place in the Top 4.  From there, Cookies will now move on to the national level in Atlanta to compete at the Terminus Festival against winners from the other universities that participated in Campus MovieFest.

I am beyond excited to be able to share the Karkour’s story with even more people and continue to spread their message that the American Dream is for anyone–regardless of what you believe, where you’re from, or what you look like.

I will be graduating at the end of the 2017 Fall semester and plan on continuing to work on more documentaries and short films. Campus MovieFest was by far the most impactful week of my college life and provided so many great opportunities to push my personal limits. 

The Village Bakery & Café is located in Pendleton, approximately five minutes from Clemson’s main campus. I highly encourage everyone to go support a local business, say hello to Abdul and Amani for me, and—if you love yourself—definitely try a loaf of their Saturday-exclusive jalapeño cheddar bread.

If you would like to watch Cookies Fix Everything or any of my other videos, they can be found at vimeo.com/jamesbradleyc.