Future Filmmaker Friday - Iris, Campus MovieFest Winner for Best Special Effects

In honor of San Diego Comic-Con this week, how about a more geek-oriented short for this week's Future Filmmaker Friday?

This short is Iris, produced by the group Apeture Process at the College of New Jersey.  As with all Campus MovieFest entries, it was entirely produced in a week - a fact that will blow your mind when you see all the CGI and compositing it entailed.  I've listed all of the team members below but Joshua Lewkowicz was Captain as well Cinematographer, Editor, Writer, Foley.  It deservedly won the CMF Golden Tripod award for Best Special Effects.

This short looked fantastic on the large digital screens at the awards ceremony.  The colors are slightly less vibrant on YouTube, but it's still worth a look.



The rest of the team:
Andrew Kuserk - VFX, SpFX / Animator, Match Moving, Character Design, Writer
Steven Munoz - Actor
Alyssa Mangel - Producer
Ryan Laux - VFX, Compositing, Editing, Gaffer, Writer
Chris Lundy - Sound, Composer, VFX, Sound Design, Writer, BTS
Garrett Verdone - Voice Actor
Manuel A. Montiel - Voice Actor
Julie Rossi - Voice Actor, Catering

Also, some of you might remember Nicholas Sailer, whom I profiled two years ago after his film "The Strong One" won Best Picture and Best Director at the 2012 CMF Hollywood awards.  He recently let me know he'd finished directing his first feature, "Ipseity."  'd like to send him some congrats and give all of you a link to view his film online.


CMF is a wonderful program that goes to college campuses throughout the year and provides students with Apple laptops and Panasonic HD cameras to make short film within one week. Each school then has their own finale to select the best of the best, which then move on to the Grand Finale in Hollywood. Each week I'm going to spotlight another student film that impressed me.