The Folsom Lake College Project Indie Film Festival was awesome and my friends and I had a fantastic time seeing all the short films. We all got there fashionably late, about ten minutes before it was all going to start. I walked up with my brother and friends to buy tickets and the people running the film festival were like, “Hey! It’s him!” They started telling me how much they loved my movie. I didn’t have to pay to get in, but I paid for my brother (they wouldn’t let him in for free even though he was an actor) and my friends. Folsom Lake College has really nice facilities. The festival took place in their large lecture hall. They projected the movies onto two large screens and we sat down in theater seats for the show.
The first hour consisted of movies that were not eligible to compete in the film festival. After we watched the non-eligible movies, there was a six minute intermission. My friends and I went outside to stretch and buy a Pepsi from the vending machine. We came back and guess what movie they put on first? PIZZA GUYS! The director was really cool about it talking about how much he liked it and that every time he watched it, it made him hungry for pizza. They put it on and I whispered to my friends, “If I try to run out of the theater from embarassment, STOP ME.” The movie then played and the audience received it very well. At the very least, my friends and I knew what movie we were voting for the audience choice awards.
After that there were 2 more movies in the category Pizza Guys was in. I was a little afraid I wasn’t going to stand up against a movie called “The Woodchopper’s Ball.” There were two other categories: Best Short and Best Animation. Some movies overlapped into more than one category, like “The Woodchopper’s Ball,” which was in both Shoestring and Best Short. Overall, the movies were great in each of their own ways.
Then the movies were done. The audience checked off their votes on their ballots and submitted them in. While the votes were being counted, I was invited up on stage to answer questions about my film. The questions were like, what editing program did I use, what type of camera did I use, and what was my favorite part in making the film. One audience member even told me he liked my movie because of the “effect” I used with the camera, making the movie look like it was older (which was actually just because we were using a really crappy camera with very bad quality).
Then came the moment of truth, the awards ceremony. They started off with best movie out of the “Shoestring” category. Pizza Guys WON!!! Yay!!! But it got better. After the other awards for Best Short and Best Animation were handed out and the festival had ended, the director said he needed to see the director of Pizza Guys for a minute.
He came up to us and told us we had won the Grand Prize, Best of the Festival. He then handed me $40, telling me we had quadrupled our entry fee into the film festival. You can’t possibly imagine how happy we were.
Almost a year ago my brother and I were in the mood to make a movie. We recruited a couple of kids from school to be actors and crew, and instead of going to the beach or going out of town during Spring Break, we made Pizza Guys. All that hard work and dedication literally “paid off” when we went to this film festival. In fact, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that it had been the best night of my life. I only wish that the other members of the cast and crew had been there, except they still live in North Carolina.
