2013 Logan Film Festival shooting for more students
Students are encouraged by Utah State Film to “unleash their inner hipster” tonight at a screening of independent movies from the Logan Film Festival at 8 p.m. in the TSC Auditorium.
The student group will screen four award-winning independent films from this year’s festival, which was held March 21-23. The films have run times between 10 and 30 minutes.
“We wanted to show short films instead of just one long film,” said Jesse Budd, a senior marketing student and president of Utah State Film. “Normally, they’re not the traditional films that you’d normally see, so you’ll get a different style of filming and different stories that you wouldn’t see in a normal movie theater.”
The screening is meant to stimulate interest in the Logan Film Festival and promote student involvement in local filmmaking, Budd said.
“I think there’s a big misconception on what the Logan Film Festival is,” Budd said. “We want to show them what it is, and give them a preview of how the festival really is, and how good the films really are.”
Considering that the Logan Film Festival was originally started to give local filmmakers an opportunity to publicly showcase their work, student participation in the festival has not been as robust as the organizers had hoped, according to Budd.
“When all the awards and cash prizes are going to people from outside of Utah, it (isn’t) encouraging people to submit their films,” Budd said.
The Logan Film Festival will not take place again until next September. Budd said the reasoning behind the change in date is based on unpredictable spring weather.
“We thought that the festival would be better if it was in warm weather,” Budd said. “We’re bringing people in from all over the country, and we’d like them to experience Logan when it’s awesome.”
Tonight’s screening is to help fill the gap between this year’s festival and next year’s.
“We wanted to have an event this year on the same day to remind people that it’s still there,” Budd says.
In order to increase the number of student entrants, the festival next year will offer a significantly discounted student application fee and introduce a new award reserved for a locally made film, according to Budd.
“We definitely want to get more students there,” said former Utah State Film president and current Logan Film Festival creative director Tyler Woodbury.
After Tonight’s screenings, students are welcome to linger and discuss the films and the festival. Madison Bayles, a Utah State Film club officer and senior in printing and drawing, said students interested in filmmaking are encouraged to become involved with Utah State Film.
“It’s really important to learn how to network. It’s really difficult to do as a one man thing,” Bayles said. “We really want local film makers to step up and be part of the film scene here. There are a lot of really talented people doing really professional things.”
Before starting the screenings, the group plans to play a brief promotional video for the Film Festival which, in addition to showing independent films created worldwide, has also featured discussion panels of several of the filmmakers, including the makers of “Pyro and Klepto,” one of the
films to be screened in tonight’s event.
Budd said the film “Pyro and Klepto” is like “the movie ‘Up,’ if Tim Burton directed it.”
“Paulie,” a comedy award winner, will also be shown along with “Light Me Up,” which Bayles described as being a “really clever, kind of funny, kind of sarcastic film.”
Woodbury said “The Red Valentine,” the fourth film to be shown, “has the production quality of anything you would see in the theaters.”
With its original debut in 2012, Woodbury said the Logan Film Festival was founded in a collaborative effort led by late USU graphic design professor Alan Hashimoto, along with Utah State Film and other local film groups dedicated to showcasing local films.
Hashimoto, who passed away earlier this year, was instrumental in seeding much of the interest in film throughout Cache Valley, Woodbury said.
“He really had the vision I don’t think anybody else did to make (Logan Film Festival) as big as it is,” Woodbury said. “If he hadn’t been here, you could definitely say we wouldn’t have any film stuff going on, but because he was, we do.”