The awards ceremony for Orlando’s own guerrilla film competition, the Orlando 24-Hour Film Festival was May 9, and several teams of Full Sail students and graduates took home prizes for their work.
In all, more than 15 of the 45 participating teams were made of Full Sail students, graduates or staff members. Student teams won for Best Director and Best Cinematographer, and the grand prize of $1000 went to New Generation Productions, comprised of three Full Sail graduates. A team of graduate students also won for Best Screenplay.
The race began at 9 a.m. on May 1, when each team received a packet with two genres to choose from, and a few other instructions. From that point on, the team had 24 hours to write, direct, shoot and edit a 3 to 5-minute short based on one of the two assigned genres.
Three Full Sail Film classmates, Anthony Hart, Cameron Boling, and John Odom III, immediately decided to go with the historical genre, and set out to write a film about a soldier who was called back to combat following the events of 9/11. The film is based on the soldier’s letter, which was written to his wife. Odom and his teammates made up Team TCJ, which took home the prize for Best Director for their film, A Brighter Day.
Mike DiCarlo, a Full Sail graduate who helped produce the festival in 2009 and now runs it, described the film as “definitely a pretty emotional film” and “very, very well-done.”
DiCarlo also had good things to say about Full Sail Film student Jamie MacPherson, who won the award for Best Cinematographer for her team’s film, Shadows of the Past.
“What they look for in the cinematography category is the use of different angles, how motivated the shots are, the mood of the lighting and how well the lighting and all the camera movements [and] angles fit in with the story,” said DiCarlo. “It was beautifully done.”
The films were judged by four local filmmakers, and the top 24 films were screened at Orlando’s Premiere Cinemas theater during a red carpet awards ceremony.
A team called New Generation Productions, which included Full Sail graduates Lee Thongkham, Tanya Lee, and Brandt Hackney, won the $1,000 Grand Prize for their dark comedy/thriller Shoot-Her. Thongkham was the winner of the Best Director award in 2009.
Recent Full Sail Film graduate, Christian Silva, took home the award for Best Screenplay as the writer of the film History's Greatest Inventions, a historical comedy about supposed events surrounding the invention of the toaster.
DiCarlo said the competition was tough this year, and that all the winners and participants who made it into the top 24 should be very proud.
“It’s great to see all these local filmmakers just coming out and making great short films in such a short amount of time, and then also it’s really great to see especially student filmmakers networking with other people. All these creative people are coming together and they’re going to create some really great projects.”
