Student-made film festivals are popular events held on campus every semester to give students a chance to showcase their talents in a fun and engaging way. The Oswego Film Club hosted Genre Fest on March 2, putting a new twist on creating movies and giving students a fun challenge.

Each of the six films followed three rules: it had to be a mashup of a romance and drama; they had to use a specific line;  they had to use a high camera angle and include a prop of either a flower or a ring.  

“ It’s very fulfilling to be given a time constraint and just having to push through any limitations,” Bart Safavizadeh, a contributor to “Time Spent Looking at my Phone,” said.

This film portrays what it is like to date in the modern age, focusing on how technology dominates communication and socialization. Safavizadeh and his team had a couple of limitations while filming, including having group members drop out and having to work outside their comfort zones.

“ We lost our group members. We lost two of them, so we had to work with those restrictions,” Hunter Rogers, a cinema and screen studies major, said. “Having to work with a genre that neither of us are used to [was difficult].” 

Various awards were given out at the end of the screening, like Best Script, Best Direction and Best Editing. An audience choice award was given out and overall first, second and third places, too.

“Children of the Stars” and “Reverie” were the front-runners of the festival, winning three awards each for their portrayal of a romantic drama. “Time Spent Looking at My Phone” won Best Direction, “That’s Life” won Best Performance and the overall third place award. 

One final limit filmmakers had was that the writing, filming and editing had to be done all within 48 hours. This meant people were forced to cut down the amount of ideas they wanted to use and had to edit on a time crunch.

“ The time constraint [was difficult] because we definitely had more ideas that we wanted to do but we didn’t have time to do,” Steven Moran, a creator on the film “That’s Life,” said.

As well as having to cut down on ideas, there were various technology setbacks, leaving only eight hours to fully edit the film, Moran said. 

The team was inspired by slapstick comedy movies where nothing seems to make sense. 

“ We wanted to do something [with] like parasocial relationships and we thought it would be funniest to choose a dead celebrity, like someone who’s been dead for a while,” Miles Hedderman said, referencing Frank Sinatra being the main love interest of “That’s Life.” 

Every filmmaker took their spin on a romantic drama, but there were always a few constants seen throughout the films because of the rules set by the Oswego Film Club, such as the reoccurring line of “you knew before I did” and including an image of a ring or flower. 

The Oswego Film Club will be hosting a few more film festivals during the semester, including a showcase of more student-run films and a film the club made together during meetings.

Photo by Maria Pawelczyk