University Hosts 72-hour film festival

Photo: Courtesy of Towson.edu

Starting February 27 at 5 p.m., students across campus will write, film, edit and submit an original short film in only 72 hours. The rules are simple: create the best film using three specific elements.

The first-ever Towson hosted film fest is sponsored by the Unviersity Residence Government and Lambda Kappa Tau social media fraternity chapter. 12 groups have signed up as of Tuesday.

A major component to this promoted event is the viewer's choice award. This will be one of the two grand prize awards given to the winning team. This will be given to the team with the most votes during the premiere in Stephens Hall Auditorium on March 6.

"We just thought it would be a cool niche for students to take part in on campus," URG director of resident advocacy Ben Steinberg said. "It is an event that hasn't been explored on an undergraduate level at Towson."

This event plans to expose the Towson community to video producing opportunities as well as creativity endeveurs.

"The amount of students making YouTube videos now just shows there's a creative niche within visual media."

Some students have registered because they are glad to see a film festival being done somewhere as local as Towson.

"I've always wnated to get involved with a type of film fest that gives you peramiters in which to work with," senior electronic media and film major Lance Duvall said. "And having it here at Towson makes it that much more intreguing for me."

URG will continue to take registrations until February 26.

Here is a link to a recent article published in The Towerlight about the film festival: Three days of film making

Here at Towson, most resident students have become very used to seeing multiple fliers posted throughout the lobby of their residence hall and sometimes even up and down the hallways. Typically, these papers are updates for meetings, new club advertisements, or upcoming events that the building staff or Housing and Residence Life wish to promote. 

Drury University in Springfield, MO, has actually banned the posting of papers within residence halls. In replace, each residence hall on their 

campus now has a built in video LCD screen to display announcements. Just as the Bursur's Office is going paperless with their bill paying system, so is this university with their methods of announcing. 

Now resident students there can view all upcoming announcements via an electronic video screen. According to the article published in The Mirror the resident assistants are actually enjoying putting together the slide shows.

As far as funding, these screens will also have advertisements implemented into their broadcast of images. There are also a number of other benefits to having these screens that University officials say will improve the campus. 

The only downside was that some students felt the money spent should have gone elsewhere. 

To view the article that was published on February 4 click here.

I thought this article was put together very well. It seemed to address all of the important issues that come along with this switch from paper to video. Drury U is not the only college that is doing this so it may have been good to look into other Universities for a comparison.