The time has come, o ye film-loving Loggers. Your chance to make that precious film of your dreams has arrived with Foolish Pleasures, the annual Puget Sound film festival dating back to the spring of 1978.
According to tradition, entries will be shown on April Fools Day, the namesake of the festival. Originally, the festival was created to be a fun event but also as a means of competition among residence halls and other on-campus houses.
This year, Foolish Pleasures is doing some things differently to hearken back to that initial sense of enthusiasm students once felt making silly college films together in the ‘70s.
The main alteration made to the festival this year is the introduction of film categories. Now, any student can submit a film (or films) to any of these four categories: residence films, music videos, microfilms and short story films.
The residence films will probably include spoofs or documentaries of whatever shenanigans the dorms, Greek houses or theme houses have gotten themselves into. Residence films can run up to twelve minutes.
Music videos are fairly self-explanatory–if you’re in a band, for example, and want to make a video for people to see, this would be a good place to submit it. The time limit for music videos is seven minutes.
Microfilms include spoof movie trailers, parodies or short skits. They should be less than three minutes.
And finally, short story films, including avant-garde, comedy, short dramas, etc., can run up to twelve minutes.
Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a camera or equipment to film with. Luckily, we go to a school that is financially able to help us with that sort of thing. Tech Services, located in the basement of the library, will have cameras, lapel microphones, tripods and film editing software readily available to students.
The Flip Videos and Cannon FS-200 cameras, as well as any needed equipment, can be rented from one day up to two weeks.
Tech Services’ software includes iMovie, Adobe Premier and Final Cut Pro. Come in any time between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Monday through Friday, or between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, and Tech Services’ employees will be able to help.
For those who need a little extra incentive, prizes will be given to the top winners of Foolish Pleasures–there will be trophies, awards and up to $175 in cash prizes.
If you’re interested, submission forms can be found at the Wheelock Information Desk, ASUPS office and Campus Films office. The forms are due by March 30 and the festival itself will be held on the evening of April Fools Day. Only one representative of the film is required to be present at the showing. The festival will include free popcorn, entertainment and a movie poster raffle.
For those who are interested but couldn’t make it to the info session last week, Cooper Arbios is in charge of the festival; contact him via e-mail at campusfilms@pugetsound.edu or via the Campus Films Facebook page.