First Annual SSU-TV Film Festival

The 1st Annual SSU-TV Film Festival took place in the Commons, on Thursday evening April 26, to great success. We gave out first, second, third, and a honorable mention, to our four entries. I hosted along with my public relations cohort, Danielle. At the beginning we introduced ourselves and explained the schedule for the night. We present three awards ending with first place, in between each we would play a movie produced by SSU-TV, in the last two semesters. The tiles included, Looking For a Roommate, Out of Options, Out of My Mind, and Boys Will Be Girls/Girls Will Be Boys. We choose the best of the films in order to promote SSU-TV during the festival.


One of my favorite parts of the experience was getting to judge the films. The four judges gave three scores out of ten, for technical aspects, artistic choices, and overall excellence. It was an enjoyable experience to discuss the merits of all the films with the other judges. There were some aspects I had not considered when initially watching the film, until another judge pointed it out. I have always taken pride in being a tough critic. This exercise in judging has further honed my critical eye.

Third place went to Suburban Legands, a story about a man who gets out of jail and tries to get back into the hustling life style. Second place went to Green Light, a new romance is blossoming, but someone else is watching through the web cam. And first place went to El Patron, a Latino stylized Godfather. There was also another submission El Patron: The Untold Story. We, unfortunately, could not accept this as a submission, because it was the same movie just a different cut. When discussing this with the SSU-TV staff, the general manager put it a good way, “You can’t submit Bladerunner and then Bladerunner: Directors Cut, we can only take one seriously.” So in the end we decided to accept the better of the two as the submission and give the other an honorable mention.

Co-hosting was somewhat difficult. I have hosted events before, like the Master of Ceremony for Boy Scout Court of Honors, but never with another person. I was unsure whether or not Danielle was hosting with me till the night of. Next time I do something like that with another person we shall rehearse beforehand. We had issues starting at the same time and talking over each other. We eventually got into a good rhythm, and by that I mean I did most of the talking (Danielle gets to host next year anyway).

Hosting my first event at SSU was an exciting and fun time. The energy of the crowd was warm, receptive, and a little rowdy, which threw me off for a sec. But nothing went wrong, we had a good couple dozen people in attendance, and we had fun.

Things I could have improved on include getting the posters up sooner, but we just had design issues, and once that is done have more frequent tabling. I should have also sent out a press release to the Press Democrat, in the hopes of getting publicity and recognition outside of campus. I would have liked to make a t-shirt for the event as well. I would suggest to those who are taking over PR next semester. Use the fall to prepare, and then begin you PR blitz the first day of the spring semester.