The college freshman experience is unique for every first-year student. Bowling Green State University offers young film makers a chance to showcase the experiences of freshman life through an event called the Falcon Film Festival. Now in its fourth year, the Festival was organized by a handful of university staff and faculty, including Jeff Nelson, the Director of the the University Bookstore, Mike Hachtel, the Assistant Director of Resident Life for Information Technology, and Kim Fleshman, who is Program Coordinator at the Student Technology Center. Fleshman and Hachtel currently serve as co-chairs of the Festival.
There are just a few guidelines for the structure and content of films submitted to the festival. Entries are to be between five and eight minutes in length, and the subject must cover some aspect of the life of a freshman student at Bowling Green State University. There can be no profanity, explicit nudity, or drug use in the film and every student on the team must be a freshman at BGSU. The movies can be of any genre, but the students usually add a bit of humor into their films. The students are given two weeks to shoot scenes for the movie before editing begins. All entries are turned in on hard drives, usually anywhere from fifteen to twenty movies are submitted for judging.
Students from all areas of study can participate in the festival. Sign up is in September or October each fall, and on average 70 students registerer to compete. To get underway the students are matched into groups of four or five and are provided information about equipment they can check-out or use on campus, including from the Student Technology Center which provides a range of support services for BGSU students.
The staff at the Technology Center have noticed a marked increase since the first festival 4 years ago in the computer skills students come to campus with. At that time many students sought help on the basics of computer video editing, while now the students are often already using advanced computer programs and many have their own equipment.
