As the semester comes to a close, an Asbury staple is just beginning. The Asbury Highbridge Film Festival is a chance for current Asbury students and high school students to showcase their hard work on the big screen. Highbridge encourages students to dream, create, and inspire.
Each year faculty from the Asbury Media Communication department makes up a festival acceptance committee. It selects 12 to 15 film submissions, which industry professionals then judge them. Finally, they are showcased on the big screen in front of 1200+ people in Hughes Auditorium.
This year the committee selected thirteen films and are as follows: Returning HOME – Randy Halbig (Graduate Film), Chops – Danny Barracca, Doug & Wilt – John Michael Heard, Yours Maple – Nicholas Joransen, Unhappy Triad – James Cook, One Good Reason – Josh Carlos Brannon, David the Kid – Kevin Combs, Don’t Forget Us – Gracie Turner, Up the Road – Danny Barracca, Laundry Day – Tyler Chong, How’s Ivy? – Ian Wang, TOAST – Travis Kane Price and Sheets – The Wold Brothers (High School Film).
Director of Chops Danny Barracca said his inspiration for this film was creating something that “wasn’t too complex.” This film is more of a musical with one actor and one room. They shot it in one day.
“Chops was almost more of me wanting to make a film that I knew I could have fun doing it,” said Barracca.
Barracca also directed another film, Up the Road. Barracca said the idea just came to him. He thought, “Woah, wouldn’t it be funny if there was a hitchhiker and he just kinda met this other thing?”
The “thing” started as a trash bag with something moving in it, but Barracca changed it to a jar. Barracca said the film originally felt “toned down” and “melancholy” until he started collaborating with Gavin Reed. Barracca said Reed really “breathed life into the character and made the character three dimensional.”
John Michael Heard, director of Doug & Wilt, said the idea came to him “while taking a nap” as any true procrastinator would. He woke up with an image in his head of “somebody reaching out of a casket reaching for a glass bottle.” The story started to come together after that. “I tried to submit Doug & Wilt last year and accidentally didn’t click the final submit button in the submission, and I didn’t find that out until after they announced all the films,” said Heard. After waiting a year, Heard is excited to showcase his film to the student body.
Don’t Forget Us by Gracie Turner is a documentary about a trip students took to Germany and Poland to learn about the Holocaust. “It started off as just focusing on the Holocaust, but then it started to focus on humanity and the whole idea of human dignity,” said Turner. While creating this documentary, Turner kept Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List in her mind as inspiration. “I wanted to show rather than tell,” said Turner.
Ian Wang is the director of How’s Ivy? whose inspiration for the film’s first part comes from his love for offbeat comedies. “I love awkward conversations and dialogue, but I love it when it drives you through the story,” said Wang. The horror and suspense genre inspired the second half of the film. Wang wanted to create a warm and comedic film on the first floor, but once you reach the basement, it turns into a more suspenseful film. After watching his film, Wang wants people to have a “reminder to reach out to people they are thinking about and be vulnerable and to realize that its okay to not be okay,” said Wang.
Travis Kane Price wanted to give his film TOAST a “scary movie vibe where it is supposed to be a horror movie but not really. It’s a comedy.” This film has no dialogue, which made it more challenging for Price as he worked on “getting Nic to portray the character the way I wanted him to.” Even though it was a challenge, Price said Nic took directions easily, which made the process much smoother.
A student-run live stream will cover the festival if you cannot attend the event. The pre-show begins at 6:30, and then a post-show will include winners from the festival. The Highbridge Film Festival website contains all information about tickets, the live stream, and more.