Last night I attended the first annual iMovie Festival at the university at which I am employed. It’s not the first ever held, just the first one here. I have to say, it was pretty enjoyable.
I was expecting a series of more and more horrible films, and maybe a few shining-star examples that would probably win it all. Instead, I found a quirky set of five films that all had to include the phrase “over at the UC” (short for University Center) and at least one Apple product.
The first film was about a couple of guys hanging out and deciding to go get some food, then go up to a cliff to hang out and talk about serious life-goal type stuff. And of course, some kids are rolling along, and one guy is driving while texting and he ends up hitting them. It was all very dramatic.
The second film was about “Urban Parkour” – although I suspect either these guys were very bad at it, or just mocking it. It wasn’t quite clear enough to be “laughed with” instead of “laughed at.” There was also a lot of really annoying slow-motion and bad techno music behind it.
The third film was called “Mozzerella Mahem,” about an undercover sting operation to bust an illegal cocaine-disguised-as-cheese ring based out of a pizza parlor. The cop is of course, discovered, and when the dealers try to run away, he busts out into an overly-elaborate action movie fight scene. Which, I might add, was really bad, but really funny.
The fourth film was by the campus Apple student rep, who did a film about possible meanings for the letters “UC” – it was okay. Some of the parts of this film were funny, at least. It was mostly just him looking into his iSight camera on his Mac and talking. The black & white filter and stylings were nice. Not terribly impressed though. I give him points for creativity.
The fifth and final film was probably saved for last on purpose. It was pretty awesome for what it was. The production value was nice for their budget and equipment. It was kind of a “Deadman’s Curve” meets “The Ring” meets every other film where they use that ghostly black-hair-over-the-face girl that crawls around really fast in stop-motion. But still, the makers of this film did a really good job.
And rightly so, because they won this competition and an iPod Touch – while the runner-up got an iPod Nano and the rest of the competitors got Shuffles.