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| Photo courtesy Cheryl Eyre |
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| Jonathan Griffith, a freshman from Lansing, Kan., Jonathan Birkel, a freshman from Salem, Ore., Jonathan Boden, a senior from Brentwood, Calif., and Scott Winn, a freshman from Olympia, Wash., submitted films in the BYU-Idaho Student Film Festival that played April 22. |
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From music videos to documentaries, the students of BYU-Idaho showed off their movie-making skills at the BYU-I Student Film Festival April 22 in the Kirkham Auditorium.
Fourteen films were shown at the film festival, including winners of BYU-I stake film festivals such as Dark Elevator by Eric Draper, a sophomore from Nyssa, Ore.
Ryan Belton, a senior from Rexburg, did a documentary on the children at Kennedy Elementary School who play dodge ball in the after-school program. The audience roared with laughter as the kids talked about what they learned from playing dodge ball.
“You can’t fake that. Kids throwing dodge balls are funny,” said Chelsea Belton, Ryan’s wife, and a senior from Rexburg.
At the end of the film festival, audience members voted on their two favorite films.
Scott Winn, a freshman from Olympia, Wash., got the most votes for his video Safe from Dust. Earlier that day, Winn had also won first place for a short film in the Spud Fest Film Festival with his film 20 Feet Behind, the same award the Napoleon Dynamite short won two years before.
“This is a really happy day for me,” Winn said.
Banana Begins, a film by Jonny Birkel, a freshman from Salem, Ore., won the award for best film selected by Justin Bates, theater faculty at BYU-I, who evaluated the films beforehand.
Making Banana Begins was not an easy process for Birkel. He shot the film in a week and was almost fined by the police for filming on the roof of the Kirkham Building.
“Luckily, one of the cops recognized me and told me that he waves at me when he sees me dancing on the sidewalk in the Jamba Juice banana costume,” Birkel said.
Banana Begins was about a man in a banana costume trying to make the world a happier, healthier place by getting people to drink Jamba Juice instead of eating unhealthy food like fish sticks and pizza.
Birkel also said he got paid by his employer at Jamba Juice for making it because it promoted Jamba Juice in such an effective way.
Birkel said the message of his video was that if we were all a little more positive, the world would be a happier place.
“Media is the most influential way to communicate with people. We don’t do it enough at this school,” Birkel said.
Winn agreed with him. “True that, double true,” Winn said.
The talent board will contine to host student film festivals in future semesters.
