Student filmmakers, Stanford Video excel on the big and small screen

Last year, Stanford student filmmakers took home the Bronze in the 2010 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Student Academy Awards. Now, student filmmakers ANTHONY WEEKS and THEO RIGBY are hoping this year will be golden.

Weeks’ documentary Imaginary Circumstances and Rigby’s Sin Pais (Without Country) are among the productions selected as finalists in the Academy’s 38th annual student competition.

Academy members will view the finalists’ films at special screenings and vote to select the winners. Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal awards, along with accompanying cash grants ranging from $2,000 to $5,000, may be presented in each of four categories: alternative, animation, documentary and narrative. The winning filmmakers will be brought to Los Angeles for a week of industry-related activities and social events that will culminate in the awards ceremony on Saturday, June 11.

Meanwhile, STANFORD VIDEO, which won two Bronze medals at the 32nd Annual Telly Awards earlier this year, has won a Silver Telly – the Telly Awards’ highest honor.

The Telly Awards acknowledge “the very best local, regional and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions and work created for the Web,” according to the organization’s website.

The Silver Telly Council, which includes top industry professionals who are past winners of the silver honor, chooses the Silver winners.

The Silver Telly was awarded for Stanford’s “Leadership” spot that still airs regularly on TV during Stanford sporting events and features Rosalyn Gold-Onwude, the starting guard for the women’s basketball team in the 2008-09 season. The spot, which won a Bronze Telly in 2010, was edited by Stanford Video’s director GORDON GURLEY, who shares producing and directing credit with CATHERINE O’BRIEN, the department’s director of business development and client relations.

“This was one in a series of three spots focusing on Stanford’s core strengths and the only one that features a student highlighting the message,” said O’Brien.

The two Bronze Tellys received earlier were for Stanford Hospital & Clinics’ Interventional Cardiology Promo, which aired as the opener for the department’s live satellite training transmissions from the Catheterization Angiography Laboratory, and the 2010 Roundtable hosted by newsman Tom Brokaw, titled “Generation Ageless: Longevity and the Boomers.”

 

- Elaine Ray and Rob Huffman