Ansley Zecckine
Published: October 29, 2008
Students and employees of Pensacola Junior College may soon have the chance to go public with their film-making skills as the Theatre Department pushes in a new direction.
It all started last fall when Lance Brannon, PJC’s theatre light designer, produced a short film and asked Rodney Whatley, program director of the Theatre Department, about showing it to the public. Whatley liked the idea and allowed it to be shown during the Directing One-Act Festival, an event typically made up of one-act plays directed by PJC students from the Directing I class.
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This fall, however, short-film has become an official part of the festival, and the opportunity is available to all students and employees of the college.
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“I think the wave of the future is going to be some marriage between live, theatrical productions and cinema,” said Whatley, “and so PJC is getting on the forefront of this new cultural wave by offering short-film opportunities during our Directing One-Act Festival.”
The guidelines are simple: no nudity, PG-13 or weak R rating, PJC student/employee involvement, 10- to 15-minute length and original work only. The PJC Performing Arts Crew, a recently founded student organization, will be in charge of judging all video submissions and selecting the one film that will make it to the big screen.
“The Performing Arts Crew is a club that is more about community involvement through performing arts. We are supporting the community by judging these video projects,” said Mo Williams, president of PAC.
No official deadlines have been set yet for submissions, but the Directing One-Act Festival will be taking place at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 6 in the Ashmore Fine Arts Auditorium, free of charge.