A distinct feature of the Wisconsin Film Festival is its attention to up-and-coming student filmmakers. Three UW-Madison students whose films were accepted into the festival shared their experiences with making their films, entering the festival and their reactions to the festival itself.
As a Ph.D. student working toward a degree in the History of Science, Amyrs Williams is not your typical filmmaker. Last semester, Williams took a documentary production class, her first experience with filmmaking. She created I Have a Sister"" as her final project for the class and was encouraged by her instructor to enter it in the Wisconsin Film Festival.
""I'm totally new to this,"" Williams said, ""I just filled out the application and sent it in and was really thrilled when I found out I was accepted."" Williams described the film as a 13-minute documentary about her sister, who experienced an adverse reaction to the DPT vaccine as an infant, suffered severe brain damage as a result and died at age 16. The film juxtaposes medical facts with photographs and memories of her family's emotional experience.
Andrew Napier, on the other hand, is a freshman majoring in communication arts with an extensive background in film. He has been involved with film production since he was 9 years old, and through Napier Films, LLC - a business he established in 2003 - Napier offers a wide range of services to clients, including DVD encoding and authoring, digital video compositing, and web design. However, Napier said his primary passions are still writing and directing.
Last year, Napier's documentary ""Keeping the Spirit"" was accepted to the Wisconsin Film Festival. He returns this year with ""Spin Cycle,"" a short film he wrote and co-directed with UW senior Michael Anderson. ""It's a short, quirky vignette,"" Napier said. The main character in the film, Poor Sap, is preparing for a date and winds up battling a femme fatale for the Laundromat's last available washing machine. Napier said he had a great experience at the festival last year and is ""extremely excited to go back this year.""
Another aspiring director is Justin Daering, a senior who will graduate from UW-Madison this spring with a degree in com arts: radio, television and film. Like Williams, this is Daering's first time participating in the festival. His entry, ""The Shadow of the Night,"" is an eight-minute, silent, black-and-white vampire film. It is based on a series of images he did for a still photography class. The film was shot last summer in Madison and includes beautiful time-lapse shots of the city's skyline and a scene in the Crave Lounge Bar.
All three students acknowledged the only way to get their work noticed and accepted in festivals is through a lot of hard work. ""The best thing you can do in general,"" Daering said, ""is just keep working. If you want to write, write. If you want to direct, direct, but just keep working.""
Their films are part of the Student Short Films, which will be shown Saturday, April 5th at 2:00 p.m. at the Monona Terrace Convention Center.
