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Vol. 129 NO. 5
Cativities
October 31, 2024
Students bring genre filmmaking
to the BIG-SCREEN at the
WILDCAT FILM FESTIVAL Photo courtesy of Pexels
Astor Powell-Pedersen and Chayton Garcia News Editor and Student Contributor
T
he Wildcat Film Festival, held on Oct. 29 gave students the opportunity to see seven student-made short films on the big screen in McConnell Auditorium. The seven films submitted were “I Still Love You” by Javier Angulo, “Peanutpocalypse” by Yami Rodriguez, “Timeless” by Observer photographer Trent Meacham, “Tinman Blues” by Owen Gallagher and three films by Dylan Hanson: “Burn Through the Dark,” “The House That Was Haunted” and “Dead South.” “The House That Was Haunted” and “Dead South” were both directed by Hanson, and he was the director of photography, co-writer and did special effects makeup for
“Burn Through the Dark” which was directed by Jakob Burnham. “So ‘The House That Was Haunted’ is supposed to be kind of an ode to halloween specials, and that’s very much five minutes jam packed with gags and goofs and stuff, like he’s walking around in the wizard hat and shit,” Hanson said. “Dead South” is Hanson’s effort in the neo-western genre, and was accepted into the West Sound Film Festival, a film festival located in Bremerton. “I’m super proud of it,” Hanson said about “Dead South.” “It was super physically taxing for everybody. We were fighting daylight every day. We didn’t even have a proper sound op, like one of the hillbillies
Tommy McBrinn star of “The House that was Haunted” (photo courtesy of Dylan Hanson)
was sound opping in the middle of a take, it was just crazy shit like that and so it’s super put together with duct tape. I had to redo a lot of the sound post, it’d be like me walking around with a mic in a field, like doing footsteps and shit.” Hanson was also proud of his work on “Burn Through the Dark” and the work that the rest of the team did. “I think my favorite part about it was just kind of forming a community through it,” Cole Delich, the sound designer and sound editor of “Burn Through the Dark,” said. “I feel like after that project and going to the extremes and being in the cold and water and stuff, it’s like we’re all kind of inseparable now and working on our next project together.”
“Burn Through the Dark” was filmed in several locations in western Washington including Bremerton, Seabeck, Everett and Easton. Filming in the cold weather had its difficulties, “Almost getting hypothermia every night, yeah, that was not my favorite part,” Mia French, the film’s producer, said jokingly. “In Seabeck we got the ending sequence of Murphy coming out of the water and it was very very cold, we had heated blankets and everything.”
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Monster from “Burn Through the Dark” (photo courtesy of Dylan Hanson)