Sixteen student-produced films made their debut on Friday at the annual FilmFest at the Historic Paramount Theater.

“Thumbs Up” won best picture, “ELON” won best animated film, and “Rumination” was the people’s choice category. Shelby Byrd, Jonah Norcross, and Case Kirby won best producer for their film “Shoebox.”

The other winners included:
Best Director – Caleb Shields, “Thumbs Up”
Best Writer – Olivia Cromis, “How to Get a Girlfriend”
Best Editor – Abbey Monroe, “Sleep When You’re Dead”
Best Cinematography – Caleb Shields, “Thumbs Up”
Best Production Designer – Nick Thompson, “Slick”
Best Sound Designer – Jackson Eller, “Legends”
Best Original Music – Nathan Wilson, “Rumination”
Best Visual Effects – Megan Caughfield, “Eden’s Forgotten”
Best Actor – Kofi Forson, “Slick”
Best Actress – Ainsley Houghton, “Sleep When You’re Dead”
Best Voice Actor – Olivia Cromis, “How to Get a Girlfriend”

FilmFest provides students with an opportunity to try new things and learn more about the process of filmmaking. It can allow students who do not know anything about the process to dive right into hands-on roles, said Kirby, senior multimedia major from Buffalo Gap.

“FilmFest is a huge learning experience,” said Kirby, “you learn so much when you are on-site, when you are with cameras, when you are with actors.”

For Kirby, one of the best parts of making the film is seeing it grow and change as new people add their perspectives and personalities.

“Ultimately, there is so much, that things along the way add that change the soul and heart of the film,” said Kirby, who served as both a writer, director and producer for his film. “When the original score was added to the film for the first time I just felt that there was this new sould tied to my project and it was so cool to see it take on a life of its own.”

Working on student films also pushes the students to think outside the box and find creative ways to tell stories. For example, in the film “Shoebox,” students worked to problem-solve a specific camera shot, which included a smooth transition between a nursing home and a historic Abilene house.

To make the shot work, Norcross, the movie’s cinematographer and one of the producers collaborated with professors and graduates to figure out how to make the scene work. After trying and failing the first time, the crew had to completely reshoot the scene in both locations to make it work, said Norcross, senior liberal studies major from Georgetown.

“The final shot of the film took by far the most work,” said Norcross. “It was a lot of moving parts to get that shot to work; kind of the highlight of the whole production was that shot.”

Norcross encouraged students to be a part of Film Fest in the future.

“There’s a possibility that to some people Film Fest might seem like something that you need to have a lot of experience in media for,” Norcross said, “but that’s not true at all of if you want to make a film just for the heck of it, or if you just want to get friends together and shoot a fun story idea you have or a just a funny edit, totally do it.”