RAW Arts wins Cinema Salem award

LYNN – Film students at Lynn’s RAW Art Works will be honored at Cinema Salem this May as part of the Five-Minute Student Film Festival.Students in the organization’s Real to Reel Film Class are always working on new film projects, but a five-minute animated short film called “The Freshman” created last summer caught they eye of the Cinema Salem event organizers, and will be a finalist at the film festival awards in May.It was the first attempt at an animated film for the class, and Program Director Chris Gaines said producing and perfecting the film was quite the effort for his students.”It was our first foray into animated film. It was an ambitious undertaking, but they came up with the idea so we decided to do it,” he said. “The kids really stepped it up a notch and really wanted to make it work.”Gaines solicited the help of local animated filmmaker Pell Osborne of Linestorm Animation, who helped the students throughout the difficult and tedious project.Students had to produce hundreds of animated frames, drawing each of the scene’s movements and characters by hand.Gaines said along with the animation, the film really came to life in post-production, where students used their experience to make everything work in unison as a complete film.”These kids had already studied filmmaking for a couple of years, so the post production is really what made the film,” he said. “It is really a multi-tiered system, with one student drawing the characters for the first part and another doing some background, etc. There is really a good amount of planning and strategizing that goes along with it.”The film takes place in four parts, and follows the comedic trials and tribulations of freshmen in high school. Students used creative license to illustrate a hapless, clumsy character whose life as a freshman is a seemingly never-ending series of mishaps.”The first scene starts with the freshman waiting for the bus, then a bird poops on him, and then he is hit by the bus,” said Gaines. “It is that kind of comedy.”Selected from entries submitted by high school students throughout the region, 10 finalists will be screened at the event. The films represent a variety of filmmaking genres, including dramatic and comedy shorts, music videos, animation, and documentaries.The filmmaker awarded the top prize at the May 15 screening will receive a $100 gift certificate to Cinema Salem and an automatic spot in the 2009 Salem Film Festival.”It is a pleasure to present these great student films in the forum they deserve, a movie theatre,” said Paul Van Ness, co-owner of Cinema Salem. “But for the audience, it also provides a glimpse of what it looks and feels like to be in high school right now.””The overall level of production quality was quite high,” added Film North’s Morris Liebovitz. “This is a generation which has grown up with affordable digital camcorders and computer-based editing, and it shows in the sophistication of their filmmaking.”Gaines, who had not been informed of the honor, said he was excited to hear that Cinema Salem would be recognizing the work of RAW Artists because he has been hoping to begin a partnership with that organization for quite some time.The screening will take place Thursday, May 15 at 7 p.m. at Cinema Salem in the East India Mall on Essex Street in Salem.