Will a UCF FILM Degree Get Me A Job In LA? Maybe...

A letter from Drew Agan about career moves in LA...

Drew Suppa and I worked on a reality show this past weekend. It's a new spin-off of Dancing with the Stars called "Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Anne." In it, two of the judges from Dancing with the Stars are both trying to find the next big singing and dancing group and they're going to pit them against each other. We were PAs when they did the auditions in LA. During lunch, the casting guys revealed they had rented a chicken costume and a gorilla costume with the intention of having two PAs get into them and get up on stage and audition for the show. Of course, Suppa and I volunteered. We got up on stage and acted like complete asses on national television. Just goes to show what a degree from UCF can get you. Attached, you'll find a cell phone picture of Suppa and I in costume with host Drew Lachey. Enjoy, Drew.

I hoped they remembered to get paid extra for the on camera work.

The DGA Student Film Awards

The Directors Guild of America is pleased to announce its 13th Annual Student Film Awards for African-American, Asian-American, Latino and Women Directors.

The DGA established the Student Film Awards to offer recognition, encouragement and scholarship to outstanding minority and women students in selected film schools. Our goal is to help exceptional, young minority and women filmmakers at a crucial time in their careers, and establish a constructive relationship between them and the Directors Guild.

Once again, the DGA is inviting African-American, Asian-American, Latino and women students to participate in the competition by submitting their films shot within the last school year (September 2006 to August 2007) in the drama, comedy or documentary categories.

Panels consisting of DGA members from the respective groups (African-American, Asian-American, Latino and Women) will review the entries, and the Guild will announce the winners at an Awards ceremony scheduled for Wednesday, November 14, 2007. Submission deadline for all entries is 6:00 PM on Monday, October 8, 2007. The winner in each group will receive a $2500 prize from the Directors Guild of America.

If you have any questions about the Awards, please do not hesitate to contact
me at 310-289-5305.

Thank you for your participation.

Sincerely,

Suzy Dyer,
Manager, Special Events

Filminute

A Message from Filminute...

Filminute, the international one-minute film festival, runs from September 1-30. The shortlist of 25 films representing 19 countries was selected after a review of more than 800 films.
The United States is represented by:

• Director Hillman Curtis' film Soldiers
• Director Elena Wen's film Air Plugs

Hillman Curtis is recognised as one of the leaders in the web design and communication industries for making short films for the web. Elena Wen hold the distinction of being one of only 2 filmmakers to make the Filminute shortlist in consecutive years. These one-minute films are already generating discussion and votes. We encourage Americans to view, vote, and comment on the 25 one-minute films shortlisted at www.filminute.com. Filminute's People's Choice award is determined by public voting worldwide.

GLOBAL PEACE FILM FEST COMES TO ORLANDO SEPT. 26 - 30

The FIFTH ANNUAL GLOBAL PEACE FILM FESTIVAL will take place at locations in Orlando and Winter Park beginning on September 26th through September 30th. The venues include CityArts Factory in downtown Orlando, the Orlando Science Center in Loch Haven Park and in several sites on Rollins College’s campus in Winter Park.

This year’s festival is the biggest yet, presenting seventy feature films and shorts telling powerful stories from 20 countries along with a series of panel discussions and community outreach programs. K-12 students from Orange County Public Schools present artwork that will be displayed in Orlando’s City Hall. The theme of the exhibit is “How Peace Grows” and students from Timber Creek and Jones High Schools will take field trips to see specially selected films.

Tickets for individual films at the Global Peace Film Festival are $8. They are available at the festival box office located in the Q Gallery in the CityArts Factory, 29 S. Orange Ave., on the festival and Red Chair Project websites (www.peacefilmfest.org; www.redchairproject.com), and at the door prior to screenings. Festival passes are $99 and $199 and include access to all screenings in all locations. For schedule information, see the website: www.peacefilmfest.org.

Kickin' It On the Festival Circuit

UCF FILM continues to stretch out last year's festival run with an array of recent acceptances and awards.

The big winner this week appears to be AMERICAN DELUXE, directed by Aaron Brownlee. The flick screened at Montreal's Young Cuts Film Festival and was nominated for three awards, Best Film, Best Director and Best Editing. Sadly, it captured none of the little trophies and Aaron was heard to rationalize "It's an honor to be nominated."

As a bonus, and complete surprise to us, two other UCF FILM shorts screened at Young Cuts -- THE WORLD, NAKED AS A JAYBIRD (directed by Tiina Treasure) and SIX-FIFTY PM AT THE USED BOOKSTORE (directed by Matt Acevedo). We like surprises like that.

AMERICAN DELUXE has also been accepted for screening at the 2007 Evil City Film Fest, happening this October 3rd thru 8th in NYC's East Village (hopefully, it'll be playing on the same bill as ZOMBIE PORN - gotta love those underground fest selections!). The short is also playing at the 2007 Rogue Independent Film Festival, in Grants Pass Oregon.

As final proof that even older shorts can have an impressive lifespan, Phil Cherynak tells us his Directing 3 short GOLDEN SAMOVAR, which played last year's SLAMDANCCE, is an official selection at
this years Austin Film Festival, and at Montreal's Film Pop Festival, both of which happen this October.

Speaking of the Austin Film Festival, we just discovered that THE WORLD, NAKED AS A JAYBIRD, is also scheduled as part of their animation screening. Somebody forgot to call me!

Over at the Bend Film Festival, our current shorts got shut out, but UCF FILM alumni Aaron King will be screenings his excellent short, Redemption Maddie, created as part of Aaron's MFA program at AFI. Yeah Aaron!

Fest - Screenings & Awards!

At the recent 2007 Bluegrass Independent Film Festival, UCF FILM placed two shorts in the Winners's Circle - The Lonely Lights. The Color of Lemons, directed by Ben Piety, received Director's Choice Student Short Film, while American Deluxe, directed by Aaron Brownlee, took Third Place Student Short Film.

Meanwhile, Melissa With A Heart Around It, directed by Andrew Gay, is now an official selection at the Chicago International Reel Shorts Festival, the Hawaii International Film Festival, and the Poppy Jasper Film Festival.

(Free) Software For Starving Students (& Faculty & Filmmakers & Friends...)

You like free? I do. And that's why I like Software for Starving Students. This is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). As the site says, We've gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.

Of course, you don't need to get the actual CD. Instead, you can download whole pile from their site, (they'd like you to use Bit Torrent, but it's not required). The list of freeware is impressive and for anyone just pulling a new computer out of a box, I'd suggest this be one of their first installations.

The Mac / OSX CD includes:

• Acqlite
• Adium
• Audacity
• Bleezer
• Blender
• BZFlag
• Camino
• Carbon Copy Cloner
• Cashbox
• Celestia
• ClamXav
• Crack Attack!
• Enigma
• FreeDMG
• Freemind
• Fugu
• Genius
• GLtron
• HandBrake
• ImageBurner
• Monolingual
• MozoDojo
• NeoOffice
• NVU
• Pac the Man X
• Platypus
• POV-Ray
• Seashore
• Schoolhouse
• Smultron
• Thunderbird
• Transmission
• TypeTrainer4Mac
• VideoLAN Client

For you PC folks out there, the Windows download includes:

• Windows
• 7-Zip
• Ant Renamer
• Audacity
• Blender
• BZFlag
• Celestia
• ClamWin
• DeepBurner Free
• Dia
• Enigma
• Eraser
• Exact Audio Copy
• FileZilla
• Firefox
• Freeciv
• Gaim
• GIMPShop
• GLtron
• GNU Chess
• Icebreaker
• Inkscape
• Juice Receiver
• KeePass
• MozBackup
• NVU
• OpenOffice.org
• Paint.NET
• PDFCreator
• Portable Apps
• POV-Ray
• PuTTY
• SolarWolf
• Spybot S&D
• Stellarium
• SuperTux
• The GIMP Toolkit
• Thunderbird
• Tortoise SVN
• Tux Paint
• Tux Racer
• Tux Typing 2
• VLC
• WinDirStat
• Wink
• winLAME
• WinSCP
• XAMPP
• µTorrent

Nice...

Want To Make A Short This Weekend? Join The National Film Challenge

Hello Filmmakers!

The time is here again for the 5th Annual National Film Challenge! The National Film Challenge (www.filmchallenge.org) is an exhilarating fiction filmmaking competition brought to you by KDHX Community Media (www.kdhx.org) and the creators of the 48 Hour Film Project (www.48hourfilm.com). Here are the details:

WHAT IS THE NATIONAL FILM CHALLENGE?

It's your chance to stop talking and start filming! The premise?
Filmmaking teams have just one weekend to make a short film. All
creativity - writing, shooting, editing and adding a musical
soundtrack - must occur beginning Friday evening at 7 p.m. on October
19, 2007 and ending Monday October 22, 2007. On Friday, to make
things interesting, each team is assigned a genre for its film, and a
character, prop and line of dialogue that must appear in each team's
movie. Then the film must be sent to National Film Challenge
Headquarters with a postmark no later than Monday, October 22. In the
following weeks the top films (determined by a panel of judges) will
be available for viewing (and voting!) on our website
(www.filmchallenge.org).

There will be two big winners this year -
The Judges Winner and The Audience Award Winner (determined by the
online voting.) Both films will screen with the 48 Hour Film Project
City Winners at this year's 48 Hour Film Project end of year event
(TBD.) In addition there will be cash prizes for the winning films!

HOW DO I SIGN UP MY TEAM?

Starting SEPTEMBER 1, 2007 you will be able to register your team at
http://www.filmchallenge.org. This is going to be the largest
National Film Challenge ever - 300 teams will be selected to compete
this year! Registration is on a first come first served basis. The
Early Bird Entry Fee is $110 if you register on or before September
20, 2007 and $125 if you register between September 21, 2007 and
October 18, 2007. Teams can be anywhere from 1 person to 30 or more
people. Read all of the rules of the contest here:
www.filmchallenge.org/rules.htm

Do you have any questions about the National Film Challenge? Please
check our FAQ and then use our Bulletin Board to post questions you
need answered: www.filmchallenge.org/faq.htm

Don't think a good film can be made in a weekend? View the winning
films from the 2006 National Film Challenge in our on-line screening
room: http://www.filmchallenge.org/results2006.htm

Doug Whyte
National Film Challenge Producer

Fest - Hele Mei Hoohiwahiwa!

UCF FILM heads west! Way out west! So far West, it's almost the East!

From the good news file, we find that THE LONELY LIGHTS, THE COLOR OF LEMONS, directed by Ben Piety, and AMERICAN DELUXE, directed by Aaron Brownlee, have been selected for screening at the (Louis Vuitton) Hawaii International Film Festival, scheduled for October 18 - 28, 2007. The event, established in 1981 to promote cultural understanding amongst the people of Asia, the Pacific, and North America through the medium of film, is one of the first Pan-Asian Film Festivals in the world. HIFF showcases the best in film from Asia and the Pacific.

From that blurb, I'm not sure how these two films got in, but thanks!