Film fest highlights Dubois County’s star attractions; people and places
This Saturday, a group of film-making and movie enthusiasts will present the first Southwest Indiana Film Fest.
The festival will be held in the Huntingburg Old Town Hall and features a day of seminars on different aspects of filmmaking culminating with the screening of eight locally-made short films.
The Dubois County Film Commission, a volunteer group of business owners, filmmakers, and officials, created the festival to highlight the county and potentially tap into some viral marketing.
The filmmakers were told to create five-minute stories that featured at least three iconic Dubois County locations and the phrase — as dialogue or prominent sign — “Only in Dubois County”. Each entrant was randomly assigned a genre for their film – horror/science-fiction, drama, or comedy. The films will be judged on cinematography
Eight teams turned in films including three created by local high school students. The locations featured in the films include the Dairy Barn and old Birdseye Jail in Birdseye, Jasper Engines & Transmissions, Dubois County Court House, Monastery of Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand, the Huntingburg Regional Airport, League Stadium, and Huntingburg Fourth Street.
At about 6 p.m. Saturday, the films will be shown at the Old Town Hall followed by an awards ceremony. The filmmakers have been asked to provide some remarks about their experiences and the audience will be asked to vote for the “Audience Choice” award. Three films will be awarded the top three prizes by a judging panel.
First place will receive a GoPro Hero 3 Silver camera package, Second a GoPro Hero 3 White camera package, and third place, $100. T-shirts will be available as well.
The film commission was originally created as a Dubois Strong economic initiative to attract more film productions to Dubois County. Besides the film festival, the commission has worked on creating a set of guidelines for production companies to access. The guidelines streamline the process of filming in Dubois County, a great benefit for companies that come from different regions of the country with different ordinances and guidelines for public use.
Along with the guidelines, the group wants to foster a grassroots movement of local creators to begin putting out their stories. Whether the film is made with a smartphone or high definition camera, the online effects of those films could put Dubois County or Southwest Indiana in a larger production’s sights.
That grassroots effort will also hopefully create a stronger community and attract new people to the area.
The economic impacts from each of these goals may be mitigated by time, but the long-term goal of attracting new people, keeping local talent local, and fostering more business is a community effort and the Southwest Indiana Film Festival is just one more attractive event to make those goals realities.
On Saturday, regional film talent and film professionals will provide seminars, demonstrations, and workshops for free. Not only is the film festival designed to create new films highlighting the county, it is designed to introduce residents to film making or help those already interested in it to further hone their skills.
The schedule pf events include time for question and answer sessions:
10 a.m. Creating and perfecting sound for film. Evan Elrod, media teacher at Jasper High School, will make this presentation.
11 a.m. Special effects makeup and props. Jacob Beam, a Bloomington freelance makeup artist who works with Waverly, a New-York based film company will lead this.
12 p.m. Acting, led by Mike Jones, president of the Jasper Community Arts Commission and actors Kevin Roach and Rusty James, both of Evansville.
2 p.m. Script writing, led by filmmaker Peter Marshall of Jasper.
3:30 p.m. Directing and cinematography, led by filmmaker Jakob Bilinski of Huntingburg.
5 p.m. Documentary filmmaking by Rachel Mummey of Jasper.
All films will be featured on the commission’s website at FilmDuboisCounty.com and YouTube.com channel.
