Leading a Film Festival

Throughout my career at Furman I have always tried to do more. Although we don't have a film major here, I still try to make my mark and prove that film at this school matters.

It has been a little over a year since I had become attached to work on the second annual Furman University Film Festival and it feels weird, but in a good way. There were some rough patches from this project, but nothing will be able to top the high of getting to interact with people around South Carolina who submitted truly great work.

Photo taken by Hai Tran Nguyen '28. Me and Long Nguyen 28' presenting!

Progressing through with planning the Film Festival throughout the school year was sometimes taxing. At times, there were quick lasting minute meetings. However, I committed to this, so it didn't surprise me. The difficult part was coordinating Long Nguyen and I's schedule. We were both Resident Assistants, double majors, and involved in student organizations. It is an uphill battle to get us to meet. Professor Geoffrey Gunn was very helpful, organized, and gracious along the way.

I have been in film festivals before, but working on the underbelly made the process of getting selected more humbling. Not to downgrade my success, but we only accepted selections for South Carolina schools, and that was still so difficult. I could not imagine taking in entries around the world. Now, I am more proud of myself that I have gotten into film festivals.

Photo taken by Hai Tran Nguyen capturing some of the people who worked on the festival!

The major part of my work in the festival was doing managerial tasks like writing and sending emails, booking meetings, and helping coordinating with Film Club's social media, Ryan Macon, for promotional materials. There was however a few things that I worked on design-wise. I helped assist in the programs, mainly formatting, and I created the laurels. I think it is super cool that I can look at it and know I worked on that. That I made that happen, even if it is simple. It is not that managerial work like warning emails intended to strike fear in the reader, so they will respond, or even the winner's choice form isn't important. I just know when they look at their poster with the added laurel, they will see a memory. I do.

In terms of the actual festival, during the week of I was going through it. I was pulling late nights, missed a few classes, had around a 3 day migraine, and a Furman Singers concert that week, but day of I was well rested and ready to go. Things ran smoother than I anticipated. The most unfortunate thing was that our printing service did not have time to fold all of our pamphlets, so we assembled a fleet of people just folding. It was about 150 pamphlets, but it was actually pretty quick and took way less time than anticipated!

Photo taken by Hai Tran Nguyen.

This is tmi, so my apologies, but the hardest problem when running any event is finding an appropriate time to use the bathroom. We included my short film Snatch'D in the lineup as a non-competition film, so I figured that would be a perfect time. My friends thought I was avoiding watching my short film, and still joke about it today.

One of my favorite parts that I was not very involved in for obvious bias reasons was the voting process. I constructed the voting excel sheet. I thought it was so fun, and cool to use excel in this manner, and I think it looks pretty good. It was also fascinating to briefly see the judges (Dr. Timothy Piper, Destiny Macon, and Geoffrey Gunn representing Josh Foster) deliberating (not pictured).

Photo taken by Hai Tran Nguyen.

The film festival just made me love film more. I went in thinking it might be more technical and disconnected from previous work I have done throughout my academic career, but it was quite the opposite. This almost combined my love for film with the technical and interpersonal skills I learned from my Resident Assistant job, and some of the technical things I had learned from my sociology research.

This expanded what I see as film. Yes, film is first and foremost art. Film can make you cry, laugh, be in awe, or be afraid. It is beautiful. BUT it is also a business at the end of the day. But showbusiness is quick moving, interesting, and BOLD.

When I think of a busy environment I think of the movie Saturday Night. Something about the actor for Lorne Michaels running around like a chicken with its head cut off is very relatable to me. On a scale from that character to Garfield (the cat), I think my general stress levels sat at about a Ben Wyatt from Parks and Rec. Some days would be easier, some would be harder. My favorite saying of all time is it all comes out in the wash. I trust that wash with everything. I can be stressed, but if it is meant to be it is meant to be and I work hard to make it happen, so it will be.

Photo provided by me!

Sometimes I will catch myself saying, and it probably is somewhere on this website, that I never would have imagined this. It isn't true to an extent. Once I sign up for a project, I'm not imagining the highs. For example, I didn't imagine giving my speech on stage with Long Nguyen at the film festival, I imagined going home with friends, proud of what was accomplished. What I imagined came true. I spent the night with some of the closest, most valuable people in my life after going to Cookout. I can't believe I am this nostalgic on something that happened a year ago, but I am. This process is all one, big giant good memory I will treasure forever and I am so grateful to Long Nguyen, Professor Gunn, the judges, and the Furman staff who helped make this possible.