The Winter Term class, elon@sundance, held an intimate, student-produced mini film festival called sundance@elon Jan. 15 in the McEwen School of Communications.
The Sundance Experience class spends a week of Winter Term at Elon University, during which they put on their own film screening. Then, the group will travel to Park City, Utah and attend the Sundance Film Festival. Sophomore Courtney Vaughn, director of media and talent relations for the class, said the screening was an especially good opportunity for film students.
Sundance@elon included 2 screenings: a documentary, "Being Elmo: a Puppeteer’s Journey" by Kevin Clash, and “Beasts of the Southern Wild."
“Being Elmo” details the journey of puppeteer Kevin Clash, from the beginning as an aspiring puppet maker in Baltimore to when he became the voice of Elmo. Then, he had reached his goal of being on "Sesame Street" with idol Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets.
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” takes place in southern Louisiana with non-professional actors from the local area.
Both films had success after their premieres at Sundance. “Being Elmo” won Best U.S. Documentary in 2011 and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” won the Grand Jury Prize in 2012. It is also nominated for Best Picture at the 2013 Academy Awards.
Students selected films that were created by their Elon peers to show before each screening. Student films included “Mitch” by David Gwynn from Elon in L.A., “Beyond Superman” by Alex Hadden from elondocs and “Olive” by Gaby Leibowitz, who was also in the Elon in L.A program.
“We felt it was important to incorporate the student films in this, since we do have the connections with the professional films in order to make that connection between our Elon world and the professional world," Vaughn said.
The second screening included a Skype chat with producer Michael Gottwald from “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Gottwald shared some advice for aspiring producers during a question and answer period before the movie.
“Do whatever it takes to make the movie happen,” he said. “Saying I’ll do whatever led me to where I am today.”
Gottwald worked with a large number of students with whom he graduated college. He told students to find the people at school who had work they believe in and who are talented and ambitious.
“Good things can happen by sticking with people you believe in,” Gottwald said.
Vaughn said the Winter Term class created a website with an interactive blog. The students will be posting things about movies they’ve seen and their own reviews.
“We got to create our own course and what we wanted to get out of it,” Vaughn said. “We realized that there aren’t that many screenings that put student films next to professional films, or when we have a professional filmmaker Skype with us and answer questions from the students.”
The class incorporated social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get students outside of the class involved. Students posted trivia questions on Twitter where people could answer and win gift cards to Dunkin Donuts.
Elon@sundance travels to Utah Jan. 18 for a week at the Sundance Film Festival where, according to their blog, they will have the opportunity to meet “professionals in promotions, distribution and independent filmmaking while immersing themselves in the aesthetics and culture of film.”