Last weekend, applicants to the Magnolia Independent Film Festival’s 48-hour film festival competed to win the chance for their films to be screened at next year’s Magnolia film festival.
The top three films will be announced in December and screened during the film festival in February. The festival will announce the top film in February. The challenge of the festival is to entirely create a film within 48 hours.
Jeremiah Joswick, an applicant of the festival and senior art major at Mississippi State University, said the 48-hour challenge is new this year, and each team is given a certain framework for their project.
“You’re given small parameters, like ‘This is going to be an action movie,’” Joswick said. “One we did in the past specified it had to be a comedy, and the line ‘Did I just lose Wi-Fi?’ had to be in it. You had to pick a certain character from a list of three names to include, and we had to use orange soda as a prop. Those are all the guidelines they give you, and you build around from that.”
Friday, Nov. 4, contestants were given their guidelines, and completed projects needed to be uploaded by Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. Films were required to be between four and 10 minutes.
Joswick explained he has a long history with the Magnolia festival, going from a regular attendee in 2020 to a judge in 2022.
“This year, this is their first time doing it, and I follow all the social medias. So, when they posted about the film festival I just thought, ‘Well I’ve got to do this,’” Joswick said.
Another entrant of the festival, John Null, described the preparations required.
“We’ve been scouting some locations, recruiting some actors and getting some props. We’ll probably be filming the majority of Saturday and spend Sunday on post-production,” said Null, a senior applied science major.
According to Mag’s website, all participants are judged by at least three judges.
Chris Misun, broadcast instructor in the Department of Communication, is the festival director for the Mag. He said the film competition brings creativity to the area.
“We understand the enormous amount of time and energy it takes to produce a short film and to do it in 48 hours is a grand feat,” Misun said. “What is also great about the competition is that it is open to professionals as well as students, and there are no restrictions about working together. We also saw a submission come in from Texas and Belhaven University in Jackson.”
Misun said he hopes festival participants take away a positive experience.
“We hope that groups had a positive experience, and we look forward to providing this opportunity again in the future,” Misun said.
Joswick’s goals for this year’s festival are to “always just have a good time” and “have as much fun with my friends as possible.”
“It’s just a good time, we love messing around, doing stuff on camera, seeing what turns out and how creative we can be in that short period of time,” Joswick said.
Null held a slightly higher benchmark.
“My own personal goal in this competition is to work as hard to make this the best possible film we can and absolutely smoke the competition,” Null said.
