Campus once again buzzes with student chatter of Asbury University’s annual Highbridge Film Festival. This year’s film festival will mark the 21st edition of the festival which displays and celebrates student films. The Highbridge Film Festival features a screening of all selected student films in Hughes Auditorium on Saturday, April 12 at 7 p.m.
The film festival, which has grown to be one of the largest events on Asbury’s campus, had humble beginnings as an unofficial student production back in 2004. While the event has grown in size and popularity since then, the purpose of the festival has remained the same.
“The main purpose of Highbridge is to showcase student storytelling,” said Dr. Todd Wold, the festival director for the Highbridge Film Festival. “The whole point is that people watch the movie. You don’t get to your destination as a filmmaker until someone gets to see your work and experience the story and so this is a way to get to that point.”
Undergraduate and graduate students as well as high school students submitted films to the festival which go through two levels of selection.
“The submissions are reviewed by the panel of media film professors, and they make official selections, which usually come to 11-15 films of various lengths. The judges are going to choose the category awards, best actor, best cinematographer, sound design, etc.,” said Wold.
Each year, various judges are brought in for the purpose of evaluating the student films, presenting seminars and selecting award categories. Each judge will give a number of seminars throughout the day on Friday, April 11 on topics pertinent to the film world.
This year’s judges include Barry Cook, a director, writer and digital effects artist known for works on Disney’s Mulan, Tron, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. There will also be two judges from the acting world, actress Maria Canals Barrera an award-winning actress of screen and stage, best known for her starring role in Disney’s The Wizards of Waverly Place and many other Disney Originals and actor David Barrera as seen in The Big Bang Theory, CSI: Miami, The Closer, N.C.I.S., Criminal Minds, The Mentalist and The West Wing.
Students who have submitted films will also have an opportunity to converse with the judges before the Highbridge Film Festival and during the afterparty which will take place in Miller.
“They have a chance to have conversations in a lowkey way and it’s been really cool to have them interact with judges and be able to ask them questions about their stories and filmmaking process and their careers,” said Wold.
As the film festival has grown over the years, the event remains entirely produced and promoted by students. In order to manage the many components of the festival, each spring semester students in the School of Communication Arts’ Special Events class work behind the scenes to bring the festival to fruition.
The class includes six different teams which include the PR team, design team, Hughes production team, webcast team, video team and the Miller team. Each student team has budgets and responsibilities and is tasked with pulling off their part of the planning for the festival which counts as their final project.
The special events class also serves another function, bringing together two different majors that often don’t intersect: communication and media communication majors.
“I get to bring all those students together and sometimes they never see each other until they take a class like this. I know they’re in the same building, but if you were a communication major with an emphasis on public relations you wouldn’t take that many media classes unless you decided to. This kind of gets them working together for a semester and it’s cool, I love doing that type of work,” said Wold.
For both students who have submitted films and those working behind the scenes, the film festival provides a range of experiences applicable to their fields.
“If they’re putting a film in, I hope they get some experience with putting their work out there and being able to have it screened and having it evaluated. It’s something that helps you grow in your career… for students taking the class I try to run the class like a creative agency. You do the work, and you gain incredible experience,” said Wold.
For those who have submitted films, participated in the production of the event or simply want to attend, the festival has become a staple of Asbury’s spring semester.
“It’s a lot of fun; it’s a great night out as an Asbury community. Asbury as a liberal arts university is a very creative community and so this is one way to see all of the creativity, the artistry that goes into these student productions and celebrate that on campus,” said Wold. Tickets for the Highbridge Film Festival will cost $15. Tickets are available for sale by scanning the QR codes on the Highbridge posters found around campus, at the door and online at https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/highbridge-film-festival/67b359b199d6650f613fa922/tickets#/productions-view
Photo courtesy of AU Strat Comm.
