Time tends to change a lot of things. Whether it’s the amount of gray hair on your head or the emotional maturity you’ve obtained, things change. One year ago, I walked into the 2024 Union Student Film Festival as an editor that hardly knew how to open up the “effect controls” panel. This year, I attended the film festival as the Vice President of the Union Film Society (UFS) and with an unnatural amount of hours spent on Adobe Premiere Pro.
On Apr. 5 2025, UFS celebrated its twentieth annual film festival. The day-long event featured three blocks of past film showings — with films from festivals starting back in 2003 — two workshops to teach students directing and camera operating and finally a premiere of 10 student films competing for awards. Alumni were brought back in person, on video call or pre-recorded videos to talk about their college film-making experience. I couldn’t help but feel inspired by seeing alumni explain how being creative in college led them to where they are now. Some landed in comfortable marketing jobs, while others landed in LA, writing for shows and films. For one day, I was allowed to believe that the big Hollywood dream was possible. If alumni could go from the middle of good ole west Tennessee to LA, why couldn’t I?
It’s easy to grow discouraged when you’re running a club composed of only enough students to pack into a small sedan. You work hard to plan events and meetings, only to see the same five faces time after time. As past alumni reminisced, we quickly realized that since 2003, the club has always been five-ish students. However, all the alumni spoke fondly of that fact, calling it “the core group” — a group of creative individuals that just enjoyed hanging out and creating together. When they put it like that, it felt much less like an “Aw man, why doesn’t anyone hang out with us?” and much more “they’re not cool enough to hang out with us.” All we really need is one person who loves the writing, one who loves the filming and editing, and one who, for some unknown, godforsaken reason, loves the audio side of things.
Even the emotional themes of past UFS students lined up with the current student films. In each era loneliness, grief and fear of the future found their way into the dialogue. Characters mourned the loss of loved ones, dating relationships crumbled and sprouted and the threat of unemployment played the role of impending antagonist. Some may call these themes cliche, but I call them life. When asked where film makers found the best stories, the unanimous answer was always their own lives. I couldn’t agree more. The truest and best stories are the ones that we experience together.
That’s the real reason film making always has been — and always will be — such a team effort. It’s not just because some of us are so desperate to get someone else to set up good audio — though that does play a large part of it — but also because people inspire people.
In his acceptance speech for Student’s Choice Award, Nicolas Smith, writer and director of “PUNCH!” addressed Cade Kaina, writer and director of “Restless Age.”
“If it weren’t for seeing ‘Restless Age’, I wouldn’t have been inspired to make ‘PUNCH!” Smith said.
Smith’s film “PUNCH!” followed a low grade super hero that helped solve jaywalking situations and fought his arch-nemesis, Creep-O — who in reality was just his best friend. The film had the audience roaring with laughter, relating with the main character as he asked the question, “Why do I do what I do?” Kaina helped on the set of “PUNCH!” working as the director of photography. The two’s collaboration is the perfect picture of what alumni had been saying all day: creative individuals working together to make creative things.
As images and scenes flashed across the projectors that night, I sat amazed at the fact that my fellow students made those images. They wrote those lines and played those characters. The great expanse of their talent loomed over me like a shadow I paled in comparison to, and yet, it was the most enlightening shadow one could ever stand in. The fact that I got to be creative alongside these people — to learn from and with them — quieted my fear of the empty page.
So yes, time does change a lot. What time can never change is that there will always be creative individuals to inspire one another.
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