Lights, camera, action. The Canton Film Festival is a well-known festival that is put on each year in downtown Canton at the historic Canton Palace Theatre. This year’s film fest was on Nov. 2, and brought a student showcase to the event, featuring many schools with video production programs in the Stark County area and much more, including a college fair, equipment demonstration as well as a panel of industry professionals from the area.
The student showcase gave each school a unique opportunity to showcase their program. Senior Elijah Carter was at the film fest and also presented while being there.
“The schools each got 30 minutes to show off their program, what they learn,” he said. “It was cool seeing the similarities and differences between how schools teach their own programs.”
Each school presented its program and did so in a different fashion. Some schools had more of a highlight reel approach, whereas others had presenters. Hoover did so by presenting and had students come on stage and present the different content that would be shown.
“It was pretty cool being on stage in front of a bunch of people talking,” Carter said. “I presented a couple of short films, I just went up, talked about who made them and what project they were for, and then we showed the videos.”
Along with the student showcase came the short film competition. Each school was given a set of rules and certain lines and props that needed to be featured in the film. The schools were given these all ahead of time and all produced quality films.
“Then when we presented,” Carter said. “Every school was given a checklist of things they needed to include in the video and just seeing how different people interpreted those things and made their own video was really cool.”
After each school showcased its film, the audience voted on which was the best film. The winning school was given a $500 prize. The short film that ended up winning the competition was the one submitted by Hoover. The winning short film was titled “Fizz” and was made by senior TJ Walker, senior Blaine Bauman, senior Elijah Carter and junior Jasper Reitz. These students and the rest of the students in the video production program were very happy to have won the contest and to have been given the opportunity to share their content at the film festival.
The film fest also featured a panel of local people who are in the industry, almost all of them own a production company in the area. A moderator was on stage to ask questions to the panel and a microphone was set up for the audience to ask questions as well.
After the questioning portion, students in the program were able to talk one-on-one with the members of the panel and further network with them and gain advice from these experienced industry locals. Earlier in the day, there was an equipment demonstration which was courtesy of Cleveland Camera Rental; much unique professional equipment was shown, demonstrated and on display. Overall, this was a very unique event that many hope will stay for years to come.
