Winning films are now viewable on YouTube

The winners of this year’s annual 4Reels 24-hour film challenge along with other submissions can be viewed on the group’s Youtube channel titled “4Reels Movies.”

Over the weekend, teams of three to four were challenged to produce a short film based on the given prompt “an arm and a leg” all within a 24-hour time span. After heading out and making their films, the teams gathered in art history lecture room (AD 165), where their submissions were viewed and scored by a panel of judges.

This year’s prompt, “an arm and a leg,” yielded a diverse showing of submissions, 4Reels president Alexa Range said, adding that this year’s seven groups was the most she had seen compared to recent years.

“It’s a fun time. It’s a fun escape that lets you try something different,” Range said. “Normally when you’re filming something, you don’t have that time constraint on you and normally at our club meetings we have a couple hours to get something done.”

Range said submissions are based on usage of the prompt, clarity in story telling and overall quality of filming and editing. She added that while it certainly helps to get good shots and well edited videos, overall your idea is the most important thing and encouraged anyone interested, regardless of major, to participate in future competitions.

This year’s first-place winner was titled “What We Want,” submitted by digital cinema majors senior Freddy Dakota, senior Loren Earle, junior Nara McRobert and sophomore graphic design major Bea Schuil, who joined the group last second as someone who didn’t have a group but wanted to participate. Dakota explained this was the first year he was able to participate in the contest.

“We all thought the prompt was pretty interesting,” Dakota said. “We weren’t really sure what to do with it at first, but then our fourth person came in (Schuil) and basically came up with our idea and we were like ‘that’s a good one.’”

Being a group of initially all digital cinema majors, Earle said it was helpful to have Schuil join and provide her perspective, which heavily introduced the direction of the group’s piece.

“It’s always good to get opinions outside of your degree or major,” Earle said. “Especially in art when you start doing the same thing over and over and you just start turning in the same product.”

The 24-hour challenge is a good way to make connections with people you wouldn’t otherwise meet Range said and added that people shouldn’t be discouraged from participating, even if they don’t have a group.

“We do have a lot of individuals show up and a lot of the times we don’t have enough that show up so we have to plug them into peoples pre-determined teams,” Range said. “A lot of the time, I feel like it would be better if we had more individuals that
show up.”