The Second Annual Videotastic Showcase Extravaganza will hit the screen at 11 p.m. tonight at Studio 35 Cinema.
The extravaganza will showcase the short films of nine Ohio State student filmmakers said Barb Lang, a graduate student in veterinary clinical science and the OSU Film and Video Society’s secretary.
The Film and Video Society started up two years ago to bring together students with an interest in film and video, said Kara Ulseth, a senior in film production and screenwriting.
Without a film major at OSU, she said students rely heavily on their own independent film projects to fill up their resumes and increase their experience in the film world.
Jon Nawn, a junior in theater, will screen his film “Short Con” during the extravaganza.
The film is about a group of college students who decide to become con artists, Nawn said. They try to copy-cat a con movie, “The Sting,” but are terribly unsuccessful. Unfortunately, Nawn said, with a lack of street smarts, they fall short in their conning endeavors.
Besides the cost of coffee, Nawn said the budget for the film was basically nothing. He borrowed the equipment from Buck-ITV and asked his friends to act in the film.
Consisting of only four-and-a-half hours of filming taken over two days, poor-quality sound equipment, and a cast of four including himself, Nawn said the making of the film became a bit difficult at times.
“We’d be doing a scene and dogs were barking, or airplanes would be going by. Then, we’d have to start what we were doing all over again.”
The Film and Video Society held it’s first extravaganza at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2004, but changed venues this year after an outpour of support from Studio 35 Cinema. The cinema donated the money and theater space to the Film and Video Society for the showing of the Buckeye Searchlight film, Detachment, Ulseth said.
“Besides not having a program to educate us on how to make movies, OSU also doesn’t have a place for students to showcase the movies they work so hard to make,” said Ulseth, who is also president of the Film and Video Society.
“Studio 35 Cinema has shown an appreciation and desire to further student work in film and video in a way that the Wexner Center simply has not,” she said.
“This showcase is great because student filmmakers can see their work on a big screen,” Ulseth said, “and even more fun, they get to see an audience react to it.”
Admission to the show is $2.
