ASI held its Warriors’ Short Film Screening this Thursday in the quad area of the Art Building.
The Screening showcased short films made by Stan State students with genres that ranged from comedy to drama to horror to even music videos. A group of judges were present to decide on the winner of the event.
One of the judges was Michelle Nungaray (senior, Criminal Justice), the ASI Vice President. Nungaray created the first Short Film Screening event last year in Spring 2018 when she was the ASI Director for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Nungaray said, “Holding this position [ASI Director for College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences] gave me the opportunity to shine some light on the arts. In my opinion, I believe the arts is something that has been getting neglected, and doing something in that area would help.”
Nungaray added that the idea of the event came from her personal experience with making short films on Snapchat with her friends. She said, “Due to the fact that it was something new to our campus and it gave ASI the opportunity to attract different students [from the arts]. Also, shining a light and giving the arts more campus pride allowed students to have their creativity come to life and be able to showcase it to others in a friendly competition.”
There were three winners chosen after the viewing of all the short films; a Prize Winner, which was the first place winner, a 2nd place winner, and Audience Favorite.
The Prize Winner and the Second Place Winner were decided by the judges while the Audience Favorite was voted on by those in attendance viewing the films. The winners of the Prize Winner and Second Place Winner were horror movies. The Prize Winner for the event was “Night,” a film directed by Sue Vang, and the second place winner was “Human Resource“ directed by Beatriz Garcia (junior, Computer Science).
For Beatriz Gracia, the process of making the film came with a great amount of stress for her. Garcia said, “We actually started out in a 24-hour film competition, so we only had 24 hours to produce the film and it was really stressful cause we just had that limited time.”
Despite finishing in second place, Garcia is still overall positive about the experience. She said, “You know all your hard work is still paid off, so titles don’t mean anything as long as you’re proud with your work and everything, so that what really matters.”
For the Audience Favorite, the choice was based off whichever film was given the loudest ovation. After going through all the films, then going from a top three to a top two, “The Cypher Factory Vol 2,” a music video about the ongoing Cypher Project created by KCSS, earned the most noise from the crowd. The film featured local rappers from the Central Valley performing off of a beat produced by Kevin Mosqueda.
Jafet Villagrana, the director of the Cypher Factory film, credits the success of the film to the artists that performed in it. Villagrana said, “The artists were actually the people that basically hyped up the video, I’m just the one that’s showing who they are and what talents they bring with them.”
For Nevin Shocker (senior, Communications, Psychology), the KCSS music producer, the Cypher Project leader, and one of the makers of the film, the semester long project has been overall positive and exciting for him. Shocker said, “It’s been really rewarding, to be honest cause with every video that we do, it just gets better and better.”
Shocker added the continuation of the project has resulted in new local artists being discovered. Shocker said, “The more videos we do, the more talent we realize there is in the area. It is kinda surprising to us, and not just to us, but also the people that watch our videos, so they’re like ‘Wow like this dude is from Manteca and he’s over here spitting bars like crazy.’”
“The Cypher Factory Vol 2” beat out “Gambler’s Debt,” an action film made by Roberto Herrera (freshman, Criminal Justice, Journalism) and Adam Mungia (freshman, Criminal Justice). Even though the film didn’t win Audience Favorite, the crowd was still cheering it on.
Mungia was very happy about the crowd reaction to the work of him and his roommate and said, “We put in a lot of time into making this film and I’m glad people liked it. I wanted to make it for everyone to enjoy so that people said they wished I won, felt really good.”
Herrera also expressed his enjoyment in making the film and said, “It was our first shot into making the video. We had plenty of positive feedback. Making the film for a competition was the most exciting part because we wanted to be the best.”
Herrera added there is a possibility for more films in the future and said, “Participating in this competition allowed me and my roommate to have a foot into the video making world. This is just one of the few works we plan on making. Hopefully, we get put out more.”
The ASI Warriors’ Short Film Screening offered students a chance to showcase their creativity in the art of filmmaking. Even though a selected amount of films were chosen as winners, the event was made possible by the efforts of all the students that participated in it.