Brand-New Local Movies Screen Sunday in Grand Forks

This summer’s two moviemaking workshops at UND are now both finished, and the results of over two dozen area moviemakers will be presented to the public this Sunday, June 29 at the Empire Theatre in downtown Grand Forks. The screenings begin at 2:00 p.m. with $3 general admission. Workshop participants and movie cast members will be admitted free, and most of the moviemakers plan to be present.

The June teen workshop that Kathy Coudle-King and I started back in 2006 is now in its third year, but this May we added a separate workshop for adults at the request of several people who had seen the movies made by previous teen workshops. Eight adults ranging from their 30s through 60s worked on four short movies in May, and eighteen young people from ages 12 through 18 shot eleven separate movies in June. Running times range from less than a minute up to 15 minutes, with most running somewhere between two and five minutes each.

Subjects include a documentary and a few dramas, but lean heavily towards comedy. There’s also an in-progress music video. A few of the moviemakers included a brief selection of outtakes immediately following their closing credits. Several of the movies were edited in alternate versions using the same footage, including a couple that became completely different stories by replacing dialogue with superimposed subtitles and background music.

Participants in the two-week workshops spent the first week coming up with ideas and writing screenplays. The second week started with a one-day Monday crash course in how movies are made. Then Tuesday and Wednesday were devoted to shooting the movies, which the students then edited on Thursday and Friday. Class members served as each other’s casts and crews, although some of the directors recruited non-class members to act in their movies.

Viewers will get the chance to see not only the directors’ own cuts of their movies, but one or more variations on several of them, showing different choices in takes, angles, and background music. Some of those are complete separate versions and others are rough assemblies that retain some of what would normally be “outtakes” but demonstrate a variety of techniques the students wanted to try out.

The screenings this Sunday will be divided into two approximately equal segments of shortly under an hour each. First will be the four titles from the adult workshop, with alternate versions of three of them. After a brief intermission will be the eleven titles from the youth workshop, with alternate versions of five of them. In all there will be about 30 different movies over the two hours.

Students in the adult session included Charlene Crocker, Dan Daly, Scott Gilbraith, Barb Gregory, Michael Harvey, Nancy Monroe, Debra Pflughoeft-Hassett, and Brad Reissig. The movies and their directors were “Duck/Duck/Goose” by Pflughoeft Hassett, “The Jury is Relieved,” by Harvey, “A Stroke of Insight” by Gregory, and “You’ll Be In Me” by Monroe.
Students in the youth workshop were Mario Alegre, Lewis Bachmeier, Samantha Criswell, Gary Edwards III, Alex Fischer, Josh Greer, Alyssa Hovet, Kelby Leake, Brandon Lien, Olivia Longie, Nick McKirdy, Michael Mondry, Halie Nettleton, Jacob Paul, Michael Regier, Tori Remer, Hannah Rood, and Riley Thelen.

The youth workshop’s titles and directors were “Bad Hair Day” by Remer, “Dawkins’ Jewel” by Paul, “The Decision” by Longie, “Easy Come, Easy Go” by Greer, “The Glutton Couch” by Criswell, “The Interview” by Bachmeier, “Lost Youth” by Thelen, “A Man, His Stapler, and the Witness Protection Program” by Edwards, “Nerf Gun War” (its alternate version entitled “Battle in the Park") by Regier, “Unsolved” by Nettleton, and “Walking Around U.N.D.” by Fischer.

DVDs of the workshop movie projects for all three years will be available for sale in the Empire Arts Center gift shop at a cost of $10 each. Part of the proceeds will be used to support future moviemaking workshops and a percentage will benefit the Empire.

The Grand Forks Summer Moviemaking Workshops are a joint project of the UND Departments of English and Visual Arts, supported in part by a grant from UND Summer Programs.

If You Go

What: Student films, UND Summer Moviemaking Workshops
Where: Empire Theatre, Downtown Grand Forks.
When: Sunday, June 29, 2 p.m.
How Much: $3
Info: (701) 746-5500