Science Media Lab takes first place in Hamilton 24-Hour Film Festival
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/scifilm.jpg” caption=”Dear David Suzuki, a film produced by the Science Media Lab, placed first in the Hamilton 24-hour Film Festival. “]Any student of film can tell you that making a quality picture is a hard enough undertaking without adding an extremely restrictive time limit to the project.
The Hamilton 24-hour Film Festival is a contest in which local filmmakers must write, shoot and produce a short film within one day. Chris McAllister, Greg Atkinson and Alan Teo of the Science Media Lab along with Scott McKenzie and Shelley Gibbons of Avtek recently won first place in the competition.
The film, Dear David Suzuki, is a tongue-in-cheek satire of anti-environmentalist sentiment in which an unnamed writer (Jon McAllister, B.Eng. '05) composes a letter to David Suzuki, defending his various large green-footprint pastimes.
“The idea was that we wanted something everyone could instantly relate to, and we thought environmental issues were good for that,” explains McAllister, supervisor of the Science Media Lab. “We thought that picking a theme that nobody can relate to would be an immediate pitfall, since you need to devote more screen time explaining.”
The contest started at 9 p.m. on May 30, and finished at 9 p.m. on May 31. McMaster's team spent most of the night writing. The next morning, they immediately started filming, driving around Hamilton and using whatever locales appeared suitable for their purposes. Once they finished filming, the editing process took them until 7 p.m., giving them time to recuperate before unveiling their film at the closing ceremonies of the contest.
The contest required them to use a toilet plunger, a playground, and the line, “Because like you said, this is life,” from the movie Garden State. After viewing all the entries and evaluating their acting, writing, use of the elements and production values, the judges declared Dear David Suzuki the winner.
The Science Media Lab itself is a new McMaster media production unit that emerged this year from the team that developed an online introductory psychology program that was featured in Maclean's and the Globe and Mail.
Though they are funded through the Faculty of Science, their services are available to any department on campus. They have experience with video, graphic, DVD and web-based production. They develop eLearning resources as well as online surveys.
Their portfolio includes videos of McMaster University President Peter George and the Colloquium lecture series, community-based websites for psychology and science, as well as several graphic design and photography projects for various departments.
