On Campus News

Alessio Summerfield talks about The Auburn Indie: Student Film Festival

By Naomi Laeuchli
posted Apr 19, 2013, 18:25

Alessio Summerfield, president of the Auburn University New Media Club, discusses the student film festival The Auburn Indie, which the organization hosted this year, and the plans for the future as well as this year�s winner.

Why did the Auburn University New Media Club decide to host a Student Film Festival? And what set it apart from other student festivals?
There is a local film festival called the Jay Sanders Film Festival that happens in Auburn, AL every year. The festival used to feature a high school competition and a college level competition featuring student films from all over the world. A large community attended these yearly events, but for the last two years the Jay Sanders Film Festival has entirely become a screening event where one feature will be shown and a few Southern Film Series shorts will be featured, with the competitive aspect completely removed. The Auburn University New Media Club wanted to revitalize the atmosphere of the old Jay Sanders events, bring a large group of students together to watch their own films and international ones, but to also replicate more of the style of festival seen at larger, international festivals.
This year there were 3 film festivals in Auburn between the end of March and mid-April. Jay Sanders once again ran this year, playing an hour of Dada shorts and ending the night with a screening of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the Auburn University UPC held a local students only festival, and we set our festival apart by bringing down a fairly known guest judge, Chris Millis (writer of Small Apartments), featuring regional films and international films, and keeping a high standard of professionalism and attention to detail. The event's first year had over 140 attendees, even with at least six other events happening on the same day coincidentally.

Can you tell me a little bit about the winning film?
This year we just featured a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Fan Favorite prize for the entire festival. The 1st place winner and Fan Favorite were both a music video called 80s Fitness directed by Tim Hendrix and featuring music by Koan Sound. The premise revolved around two competing 80s fitness show casts who were plotting to murder one another. It was a very fun, colorful, and well produced film with a clearly defined narrative and plot structure.

What was some of the work you put into creating this festival and making it a success?
Unlike any other festival in the area we pushed pretty hard to promote the festival online via venues such as Reddit, 4chan, and SomethingAwful, as well as through social media outlets to attract locals. We had a volunteer street team that focused on printing and posting several student made posters and flyers, which all looked wonderful, and we even spent a few days promoting the event all over campus with Auburn Indie: Student Film Festival t-shirts on. A big thanks goes out to the student media at Auburn University for airing a radio PSA, a promotional video that the New Media Club produced, and for featuring us in the student paper, which all helped make a difference in attendance and awareness.

Will the festival be returning next year? If so what are your plans for its future?
The festival will be returning next year, although I won't be the director of the project. We will have a new organizational president and a new group of students, so hopefully we can record our faults and our victories from this year's and pass that information down. As far as major changes, we think that next year we'll cut down on what we accept to show in order to keep the event from going too late into the night, and we will change the prize distribution into something a bit more rewarding for the regional films and for the top of each genre, but all of these changes are still being refined.





Resources:

Auburn University New Media Club