Mississippi State University’s chapter of Broadcast Education Association (BEA) participated in BEA’s annual Collegiate Media Chapter Film 48 Competition. The competition began Oct. 20 and concluded at noon Oct. 22.
Participating teams received an email from BEA at noon Oct. 20 containing a randomly assigned film genre along with a list of required elements to include in their films. The list of required elements included a specific character name, a prop and a particular line of dialogue. Submitted films were required to be between 3 and 6 minutes. Teams were given exactly 48 hours to produce and submit a film following all guidelines to qualify as finalists.
MSU’s BEA team participated in the challenge last year but did not place. Lolly Beck, a senior communication major from Dothan, Alabama, serves as president of the club. Beck explained how the team prepared for this year’s challenge.
“This year we’ve gone into it a lot more prepared, so we have a schedule where everything’s going to be done by certain times. We have a list of roles that tells everybody what they’re supposed to do. We’ve kind of made it more streamline and organized this year,” Beck said.
Beck also shared how this competition serves as a great opportunity for everyone involved.
“There’s a lot to do within that period of time but it’s really fun. I think that it kind of forces you to be creative because whenever something goes wrong and you have a time limit like that where you’re like constantly counting down the hours it makes you much better at thinking on your feet and things like that,” Beck said.
Kennadi Walker, a senior communication major from Madison, was one of five members on the BEA competition team. Walker laid out the team’s course of action upon receiving the film prompt Friday.
“We’re just trying to write out script and kind of figure out what direction we want it to go in. That’s pretty much all for today and planning how we’ll shoot for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a film day mostly and then if we have time we’ll start editing. Sunday will be strictly dedicated to editing and submitting,” Walker said.
Once the script was written and roles were decided, the team spent Saturday filming. Team member Teirrah Tidwell, a senior communication major from Jackson, shared details of how Saturday was spent.
“We started at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday and we went to one of the study rooms in College View to shoot one of the scenes. It was like a therapy session scene that we did so we shot that there. Another location was at The Refuge kind of by the lake and that was just kind of like a setting scene per se because this was a mystery so we were trying to add like a suspicious element of, you know, being in wooded areas,” Tidwell said.
The team finished filming by 5 p.m. Saturday, which was much earlier than last year’s time, which was 7 a.m. that Sunday morning. Tidwell shared how the team felt about their performance compared to last year’s.
“We feel good about it especially compared to last year. We were very stressed out about it last year and this year, we just simplified our plan and everything and made it easier for ourselves. We didn’t go into it, you know, in over our heads so we just simplified it and made it to where everybody can participate and we just made it way easier,” Tidwell said.
Films from each college will be judged by a BEA peer-review panel. The winner will be announced in early December 2023.
Teirrah Tidwell and Anthony Jenkins are part of MSU's chapter of Broadcast Education Association (BEA).
