Friday Free-For-All: Campus MovieFest's "The Strong One"

This week kind of turned into an unofficial salute to student films and short films, so this seems like the right time to plug a program I first heard about a while ago.  Campus MovieFest has been around for a little more than a decade offering college students a fantastic opportunity to brush up on their filmmaking skills.

CMF travels from college to college, providing participating students with Apple laptops and Panasonic HD camcorders.  Each group has one week to create their own short film.  At the conclusion of this, a red carpet finale is held to select the best films from each school, which then advance on to the finals at a gala event held in Hollywood.  CMF gets stars from TV and Film to present awards to the best shorts in several categories.

I had the honor of attending one of these as a guest a few years back, when it happened to be held on the Paramount lot.  It was quite a kick to see students all over the country getting a taste of the Hollywood experience and seeing their film shown in the state-of-the-art Paramount Theatre.  That year, the celebrities handing out awards included Oscar-winner James Cromwell and Don Johnson.  Living out in L.A., you can get kind of jaded to the whole Hollywood experience, but I know what a thrill it would have been for me to have my movie compete in the CMF Finals when I was in college, and I think it's pretty cool that Campus Movie Fest has been able to do this for more than a decade.

This short film was produced by students at North Carolina State University, and it popped up in my feed a while back as one that really impressed some of the folks at CMF.  I figure the least I can do is give these guys a few more eyes on their film.  It's called The Strong One.




The Strong One Cast & Crew :
Josh Bielick - Captain, Cinematographer
Nicholas Sailer- Director, Screenwriter
Matt Harris- Production Assistant
Timothy Reavis- Writer, Actor