Making the Grade

A tale of getting the paper in on time wins Froshlife student film contest

Monday, March 3, 2008

Durham, NC -- For the past six years, first year students at Duke have had an unusual way of getting to know each other – they made a film.

Almost a quarter of Duke’s 1,600 first-year students participate in Froshlife, a film competition among the first-year residence halls. The rules are simple. Students are given digital video equipment and over an intensive 20-day period told to make a film about campus life that comes in at eight minutes or less.

This year’s winning film came from Wilson Residence Hall (Quicktime film) and starred Courtney McIntyre as a young student whose efforts to get her paper into class on time is thwarted from a nightmarish collection of obstacles, from missed buses to assault lemurs and a Twilight Zone of UNC students.

The movies were shown at an awards ceremony on Feb. 24 (the same night as the Oscars) in White Auditorium on East Campus. The Wilson film, called “Making the Grade” not only took the top picture award but also won for McIntyre as best actress and Ryan Brown and Andrew O’Rourke as best editors.

The winning film will also be shown at Durham’s All-American Film Festival, March 8, between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. at Rigsbee Hall in downtown Durham.

Other winners were:

Runner-up Best Picture: Gilbert-Addoms, “Second Impressions”

Best Actor: Will Sutherland and Joav Birjiniuk (Randolph)

Best Story: Pronoy Sarkar (Pegram) & Sandeep Prasanna and Erica Jain (Gilbert-Addoms) (tie)

Best Director: Kevin Wu (Brown)

“I am extremely impressed with this year's crop of movies,” said Michael Faber, a multimedia specialist with the Office of Information Technology and one of the Froshlife organizers. “We have some of the best and most creative movies I have ever seen in this competition, which was validated by the raucous standing-room-only crowd last Sunday night in White Auditorium.”

And the Winner Is...

Here are direct links to streaming Quicktime movies of the entries. This year's films -- as well as those from previous years -- can also be downloaded on Duke iTunesU.

Wilson: "Making the Grade"

Gilbert-Addoms: "Second Impressions."

Aycock: "Duke Forrest"

Southgate: "The Legend of Pat Hamburger"

Randolph: "Untitled."

Pegram: "Impressionism"

Blackwell: "Meeting Girls"

Alspaugh: "Stage Five"

Brown: "Duke Life: A Slight Dramatization"