Logan Film Festival to open this weekend

The Logan Film Festival has upped its game to provide better-quality films this year, said Jesse Budd, one of the directors of the festival.

The film festival will take place Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Sept. 25-27, in the Ellen Eccles Theatre, the Dansante Theatre and at Death Ray Comics. It will feature films from around the world as well as from Utah.

Budd, who graduated from Utah State in May with a degree in marketing, said the board booked better films by being more involved in selecting which ones will enter the festival. In the past, there were about 10 people who pre-screened all 150 submissions and rated them on a scale from one to 10, he said. The board would then look at which films had the highest scores and choose those without watching them. However, the board selected them differently this year.

“We took the top couple of their films that they watched, and then we ended up watching them ourselves,” Budd said. “Then we had the side-by-side comparison that we were able to make a better judgement on those.”

Budd said this worked because when the board relied too much on the pre-screeners’ numbers, it may have been weighted wrong.

“Each person has their own opinion, and one person’s 10 might be another person’s five,” Budd said.

Mason Johnson, the lead producer over the festival, said the films he most looks forward to are “20,000 Days on Earth” — which will be the headliner — “The Frontier” and “Young Americans.”

Johnson said “Young Americans” is a big deal because it was written and directed by local filmmaker, Kevin Lacy, who is one of the only local filmmakers to go to the American Film Institute, an elite film school. This film in particular is Lacy’s master’s thesis.

Johnson said the first night will feature the film “Ephraim’s Rescue” followed by a question and answer session with the filmmakers. Though it’s already released on Blu-ray and DVD, it is there for a more conservative crowd who might want to watch it on the big screen, he said.

Johnson said a majority of the filmmakers from the state of Utah who have submitted films to the festival will travel to Logan. It will be a place where they can show their films and mingle with each other.

“It’s always nice to provide a good venue for filmmakers around the state to basically network,” Johnson said.

Budd said this networking of filmmakers is one of the most important things about the festival because Logan is a prime place for creativity with a lot of potential for good filmmakers, but there are limited opportunities for them.

“I think it’s somewhat of a shame that our school doesn’t have a film program because I think it would thrive in Logan even more than it would down at BYU,” Budd said. “I feel like the festival is one of those avenues that can gather the filmmakers and make people excited about making films.”

Weston Woodbury, vice president of the Logan Film Festival, said a major goal of the festival is to get people excited about film.

“We’re all passionate about it and we all want to make films as well,” Woodbury said. “We want to see northern Utah recognized as a good place to make films because there’s so many great locations up here.”

Johnson said there were other film festivals before the Logan Film Festival existed, the most recent being the Fringe Film Festival, which was discontinued. The main difference the Logan Film Festival brought about was a focus on independent films from around the world.

“Fringe was more of a locals-only type of gig that didn’t focus on the artistic expression that we were trying to get out of the films,” Johnson said. “We were really trying to bump up the quality in films that we could get submitted to our festival.”

Johnson said despite the fact that there are films from around the world, there is an entire category called Locals Only which has the biggest cash prize of the festival at 1,000 dollars. He said it is good to incorporate both worldwide and local aspects because it allows filmmakers and audiences in the community to see quality films from around the world.

“Incorporating those two aspects, it gives everyone a chance to see things that they wouldn’t typically be able to see,” Johnson said. “When we get international independent films into our festival, it gives those people a chance to actually expose their film to new audiences as well. So it works both ways.”

Johnson said all the films are submitted by the filmmakers through a website called Withoutabox, which allows them to find film festivals looking for entries. For the most part, the board does not reach out to get individual films. This year, Johnson said there were about two exceptions, one of them being “20,000 Days on Earth.”

Budd said he hopes people who go to the festival gain more of an appreciation for independent film and an understanding that good films do not require a big budget.

— topherwriter@gmail.com

Twitter: @ChrisCampbell02