festivals

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Media Arts student Willem Kampenhout won Best Emerging Director at the Other Worlds Austin Film Festival for his film The Surface. The film also won Best Emerging Production Design, attributed to Ashley Cook. Kampenhout started making films when he was only six years old and used his personal experience growing up as the inspiration for The Surface. In December of 2013 he spent winter break watching several crime drama series, which sparked the question, “How much would one risk on behalf of their family?” “I began writing the story of a mother wandering the apocalyptic wasteland in search for spare parts for her cybernetic husband and daughter whilst avoiding a mechanically mutated monster,” Kampenhout said. From this, he developed the story of a mother who risks everything to save the life of her son. The film follows the mother as she searches for a new power source to help her dying son. After being tricked into buying a bad power cell, her only hope is to venture to the blighted surface and steal the infinity cell from one of the monstrous “tainted” creatures. The whole film came together in about two years from start to finish. Kampenhout mentioned the greatest difficulty behind creating a film was being a student and working with other students. “We have obligations other than our projects,” Kampenhout said. “Because it is not an income source, we have jobs as well.” Other than a lack of time, they faced a lack of experience that required more time to produce quality work. Despite these challenges, Kampenhout enjoyed working with other talented and eager students who worked on the music, sound design, art, cinematography and acting. He believes that real joy comes when someone other than oneself gets behind the story and makes it better. They entered the film in Other Worlds Austin, a film festival featuring only Sci Fi films, where he won the award. The Surface also won Best Student Film at the Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival and has currently been accepted into Dam Short Film Festival (Nevada), Original Narrative FIlm Festival (Dubai) and Film Quest (Salt Lake City). “We are building an audience for the film, and seeking out distribution and investors to fund a feature film version of it,” he said. Visit the film’s Facebook page for the trailer and updates about the film. https://www.facebook.com/TheSurfaceFilm

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Dubbed as “a love story that isn’t spoiled by the trailer,” the new musical Single Wide has attracted national attention, awards and the opportunity to be performed Off-Broadway in the 2015 New York Music Theatre Festival (NYMF). What started as a joint project between Brigham Young University’s George D. Nelson, the head of the playwriting program in the Department of Theatre and Media Arts, and Jordan Kamalu, a commercial music major in the School of Music, is now exploding into a star-studded venture. Jeff Whiting, a BYU Music Dance Theatre alumni and acclaimed Broadway director has just signed on to direct Single Wide’s world premiere at the NYMF festival in New York in July. “I’m honored to have been asked to help develop Single Wide and take it to the stage in New York,” said Whiting. “I love the piece! I think the story is going to translate well on the stage in the context of the dialogue and the music that’s been created, it’s going to make a real big splash in New York.” In addition to this privilege, Single Wide received the Blanche and Irving Laurie Musical Theatre Award from The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). This award recognizes the best new musical to be written and performed on a university campus in 2014-2015. Excerpts from the musical will be showcased at the KCACTF national festival in Washington D.C., this April. Single Wide follows a community of single women living in a trailer park in the southern United States. Katy, a single mother, living with her own single mother, is trying to get her son out of their “single wide” situation. For her, this means hard work and avoiding men, especially the type that left her there in the first place. But when her son befriends the reclusive new move-in two trailers down, she sees something different in him that makes her take a second look. “At the core of this musical is the story of an unlikely family that begins to come together. No one could have done this better than George,” said Whiting. “George has this ability to really create dialogue that sounds like people, the way they actually exist in their world. Then it’s Jordan’s score that really makes it fun. His music gives wonderful life and vibrancy to this piece. Their collaboration is what makes this project so brilliant and clever. “ “It’s thrilling that Single Wide has won these recognitions,” said Nelson. “These honors belong to our entire department and the atmosphere here that is supportive and conducive to the development of new works. I hope these awards are momentum-building.”

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