On Saturday I attended my third Film Outside the Frame. My freshman year, the awards were held at Warner Bros and, for the last two years, they have been at Paramount Pictures. Film Outside the Frame is LMU SFTV’s annual student film festival and awards ceremony which honors both current and former students, including distinguished alumni, in all areas of filmmaking.
This year, in addition to awarding last year’s students for their outstanding film work, we also honored talented alums Chris Hanada and Tanner Kling, co-founders of Retrofit Films, known for pushing the boundaries of web-based filmmaking in digital and other media. In addition to the Heroes webisodes, Retrofit has produced mobisode content for My Own Worst Enemy and Gossip Girl, and webisodes and DVD content for Smallville (the animated Kara & The Chronicles of Krypton) and Vampire Diaries (A Darker Truth).
Like last year, I was part of the LMU SFTV team that worked the event. On Monday I was at the Paramount Theater for a rehearsal and arrived early on Saturday to help with the preparations and setup. After the award ceremony was over, we had several food trucks providing some awesome complimentary food and beverages for everyone. There was also a chance to have your picture taken in a vintage paper moon setting. All in all, it was an evening to enjoy and celebrate what it means to be an LMU SFTV student.
One of my supervisors at the event had graduated from LMU several years ago, and he told me about how different Film Outside the Frame used to be. It wasn’t always presented like an awards show; it used to take place at DGA and it was a selection of what the faculty considered to be the 5 or 6 best films made that year. There were not categories or nominees and it was more for the school’s benefit rather than the students. I think it’s wonderful how far FOF has come since then.
Film Outside the Frame is just another reason why I love being a film student at LMU.
