The dark screen suddenly brightens to reveal two cars screeching across the racetrack, hurtling closer and closer to the camera. Just when the pair appear to be on the verge of colliding with the cameraman, the two cars swerve and continue whizzing down the racetrack.
Senior Nathaniel Chen shot this scene in Englishtown, NJ, and incorporated it into his film “Drift,” a montage of drifting culture. The film placed second in the 2010 Video Fairfax Competition and Chen expects to compete again.
Video Fairfax is a film competition founded in 1991, and the program welcomes all K-12 students to compete by submitting films with the promise of cash prizes for those who manage to place highest in their categories.
Chen expects to submit one independently-made video and another that could be his final IB Film Study project.
However, Chen said he had not yet decided what subject matter to use for his IB Film Study project.
Chen’s IB Film project will be one of many made for the final IB Film Study 2 project, as Film Study teacher Bello has made the project a formal assessment 50 percent of each student’s IB grade for the course.
According to Bello, all IB Film Study 2 students are currently in the brainstorming phase for their IB Film projects.
According to Bello, the projects will be due March 19. Bello added he will “strongly encourage them to submit their works” to Video Fairfax.
Marshall has participated in Video Fairfax for the past three years.
Chen and alumni Mace Smith and Sebastian Wilbern won awards in two of those years.
The jury panel judging the entries will consist of professionals from local television studios, educational institutions, independent video artists and companies.
The entries are primarily judged by concept, clarity of objective, creativity and originality.
Other judging criteria include production technique, interest, talent performance, special effects and audio quality.
Students are warned against copyright infringement, which may jeopardize their works and disqualify them from the competition.
“I’d like to get first if I can,” Bello said. “Hopefully the IB Film 2 students can put [the school] on the map.”
Bello hopes to have some IB Film Study 1 students to participate “but for the first year we’re mostly going through textual analysis and film history so they haven’t really had the opportunity to make independent works,” he said.
Anxiety, drama, global cultures and science will be a few of the Award Divisions among the total ten. The divisions will be divided by grade level.
The reception and awards ceremony for Video Fairfax will be held on May 4 at the Stacy C. Sherwood Community Center from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.