Written by Zack Silvas. Media by Whitney Nichols.
In Greenville, there is a lot of untapped talent that is among our student body—from members of the basketball team to those with an artistic eye, to even those who can plug numbers into equations faster than I ever could. If you’re talented in filming at GU, you’re in luck. The digital media department is holding the #CarpeDM Festival of Film and Animation. From now until May 6th, you have the opportunity to create a film that is 3-5 minutes long about anything you want. To get a better understanding of what this event really is, I talked to Lisa Sharpe, who is putting the event together and had some insight to share on what can be expected.
When asked about the main reason for putting this together, Sharpe said, “OK, well, the CarpeDM event was conceived because I really wanted our Center for Visual Culture and Media Studies to start putting on some events, and myself being a filmmaker, I thought, ‘hey, let’s have a film festival. We have animation classes, we have digital video class, let’s go ahead and start working our way into a bigger film festival.’ So this is actually just the first step towards something bigger and we’re going to grow it bigger every year. In October, we’re actually going to have another festival. The CarpeDM Festival this year is strictly for students who at Greenville who have taken our video classes or any Greenville student who’s interested in film and video. Next year we’re going to start inviting people in from the outside.” Even with Sharpe wanting to have the event grow, she also wants the students who are entering the festival to learn a couple of things. “Well, first of all, I want to showcase the work that our students are doing, because we have students that are just doing amazing work, students who don’t even have a film or a video background, students who are not even Digital Media students. We had some amazing films come out of Intro to DM that were from students in sports management and audio engineering.” With student showcasing their talents, this also allows the Digital Media Department to grow and have more exposure to incoming students.
Having an event like this, I had to ask Sharpe if there are more plans to have more events for the fall semester and maybe earlier in the spring semester. She said that they are very open to having more events like this in the future. “We started with our 50-Hour Film Festival, which is open to any Greenville student who’s willing to make a film in 50 hours. This is step two. Step three is probably to open it up to different, you know, possibly they invite different people. When you work with the Vista, one of the things that we’re starting to do is to open up a piece to the entire community to contribute to. So we did that with our hundred and one percent articles and the inviting the community to participate. And I can see that happening with the film festival as well. I mean, what kind of film would a Pre-Med Major make? I’d like to see that. I’d like to see the librarians make a film. I’d like to see a faculty-student collaborative film. There’s so much that we can be doing in this community. We have the resources, we have the equipment, we have the talent, we have the student body, and we’re all in this together. So I say, let’s make movies.”
As you can see is that you have events likes this that are willing to tap into the student body and also bring together the community in the future. With plans to have more events like this, the future is bright.
For more information about the CarpeDM Film Festival and see the rules, click here.
