Multimedia Oscars 2022: Student films depict a room for elusive dreams
December 10, 2022
A theatre-style popcorn maker, red carpet, and golden statuettes greeted guests at the annual “Oscars” ceremony, celebrating work by first-year students in the Introduction to Multimedia course.
The event in the Pit at the Architecture Building took place on December 7. It featured a screening of short films on the theme “a room for elusive dreams,” followed by an awards presentation. A panel of judges, Eric Archambault, Stephanie Murray, Damiano Aiello, and Gabrielle Argent, selected the following winners.
Best Picture: Maddy Lamey (Conservation & Sustainability)
Best Film Editing: Emma Yau (Urbanism)
Best Soundtrack: Penelope Gendron (Design)
Best Story and Screenplay: David Mokine (Design)
Best Visual Effects: Mang Vum (Design)
Best Scenography: Yasmeen Nabih (Design)
In addition, two students won an Honourable Mention:
Soundtrack: Amalia McCarthy (Design)
Visual Effects: Kimya Rose (Design)
See winning videos, jury comments, and jury profiles below.
Ninety-two out of 100 students submitted films for consideration.
“After two years of being confined behind a screen, it was such a wonderful and vibrant experience to celebrate first-year students’ hard work in person,” says Adjunct Professor Adriana Ross, who leads the course.
“All the entries were beautifully thought out and executed,” she says. “The judges were faced with tough decisions to pick six winners.
“What struck me the most was the overall enjoyment and participation of the students and the immense contributions of the teaching team to set up the event and create a memorable experience.
“This year, the school invested in a small movie theatre-style popcorn maker to make the movie screening experience even more realistic,” she adds.
Introduction to Multimedia introduces students to the theoretical, conceptual, and technical aspects of multimedia and is structured around two themes: Traces in Time and Reveal and Conceal.
The assignments incorporate work from the first-year drawing course. Students use their drawings as a basis to introduce and put into practice techniques such as digital photography, Photoshop, Illustrator, and videos that lead to creative transformations.
For the final assignment, Ross asked students to create a 30-to-60-second movie using any movie editing software. They were to deconstruct images, drawings, or models of previous assignments with animation and then reuse the leftovers or spolia as building blocks and materials. The goal was to design and construct a space for elusive dreams for someone and finally create an immersive atmosphere inside the room.
The prompts included the following: The cycle of a person’s life starts with the beginning of a new journey to a new ending that is a complex journey through a life of mixed reality in which the ephemeral existence of dreams and time collide to produce the physical and immaterial world in which we live.
“The objective is to create a well-crafted film that renders a consistent, compelling narrative to the viewer,” says Ross. “The film should show great intent, have an aesthetic consistency from the title sequence through to the credits and including the soundtrack.”
The teaching assistants were Caitlin Chin, Reem Awad, Hadiya Al-Idrissi, Simone Fallica, Harrison Lane, and Daniela Olivares.