Video Competition Lives Up To Its Search For Creativity

By Shannon Hicks

Twelve videos were screened at the headquarters of Charter Communications on May 3 in what was the first awards ceremony of the James Diaz Memorial Video Festival. Producers and guests had been invited to the building on Commerce Road in Newtown for the screening of the videos that had been selected as tops in their classes, while the tension built up to find out who would be named the winners of the high school student and adult divisions.

At the end of the screenings, Southbury resident Kathryn Wlodarczyk was announced as the winner of the high school division for her film Spirit Week and Adam Bagger of Newtown as the adult winner for his entry, Roll Tape.

The awards ceremony was the result of a competition that opened in September 2002. At that time the Cable Advisory Council invited anyone living within any of the 14 towns served by Charter Communications’ Newtown franchise area to submit a video at least three minutes in length, but no longer than eight minutes, in VHS format. Subject matter was left open to the video producer, with the only stipulation that it be suitable for viewing over local community cable during prime/family time.

By mid-January’s deadline for submissions the three-member jury for the competition had a tough task ahead of them.

“The selection of only one winner in the adult category and one at the high school student level was extremely difficult for us since all entrants demonstrated imagination and skill,” Paula Hopper, the competition’s chairman and one of its judges, wrote in April. “The subject matter chosen … ranges from lyrical imagery, historical depictions, documentary and spoof to sophisticated, cinematic storytelling.”

“This is our own little Sundance Festival for those who can’t make it out West,” commented John Sabo, one of the competition’s judge and an emcee during the screenings on May 3. “One of the most interesting things about seeing work like this is the producers’ interpretations under similar guidelines.”

The screening room was packed for the ceremony, which opened with welcoming remarks by Dick Elwell, the director of community access and community affairs for Charter. John Sabo, one of the competition’s judges, then served as emcee for the screenings.

“There really is a sense of individuality,” commented one attendee. “You really get a sense of different looks from every video.”

The high school student division winner, Kathryn Wlodarczyk (“wuh-dar-sick”) did what all good writers do: she worked with a subject she knew about. Her video, Spirit Week, followed an annual weeklong event at Pomperaug High School, where Miss Wlodarczyk, age 15, is currently a freshman. The event allows students to celebrate school spirit with different dress-up themes each day of the school week. These themes lead into Friday’s traditional homecoming pep rally and class competition, where students in each grade decorate one area of the school’s gymnasium walls. All of this culminates in the annual homecoming game on Saturday afternoon.

Miss Wlodarczyk made her video last October. The shooting took place over the six days of Spirit Week, and the editing took another three weeks. She used the iMovie program, kept the video in sequential order, and each cut in action was accompanied by music.

“Everyone was tapping their feet to her film,” Mr Sabo mentioned a few days after the awards ceremony. “She’s got great instincts.”

Charter’s was not the first video competition for Miss Wlodarczyk. Last year she was involved in the National History Day competition; her documentary, The Industrial Revolution In America, reached the national level.

This year Miss Wlodarczyk created a new documentary, The New York City Draft Riots Of 1863: The Rights and Responsibilities of The Government To Establish A Draft, which she co-produced with her friend and fellow PHS freshman, Drew Nimmo. The pair has already breezed through the 2003 Regionals, which allows them to advance to this month’s state-level competition.

“I’d love to go into the video field, somehow, in the future,” Miss Wlodarczyk said last week.

The competition’s adult winner, Adam Bagger of Newtown, is currently finishing his sophomore year at Boston University. He is pursuing a bachelor of science in film with a minor concentration in psychology. He is also working part-time for Alloy Marketing & Promotions, a Boston-based ad agency.

This summer Mr Bagger will be living in Manhattan to intern full-time with CBS News, while returning to Newtown to serve as a wedding videographer. Before graduating he also plans to spend a semester abroad studying Australian cinema in Sydney and to hold an internship in Los Angeles.

His interest in film, he said recently, stemmed from the experiences of his father, Peter, in the field. It was while attending Newtown High School and working under the instruction of Kerry Hrabstock, said Mr Bagger, that the interest became a passion. What followed was a series of independent endeavors, he continued, one of which was Role Tape.

“With Role Tape, I intended to illustrate the self-conscious nature of cinema, to suggest that there is an equally meaningful presence behind the lens as there is in front,” Mr Bagger said from Boston recently. “I used the duality of the film actor to depict the two tiers –– the on- and off-screen. The actor has both a façade and a face, and rarely are both seen together in cinema.

“Role Tape, however, shows that the film character can coexist with the film actor,” Mr Bagger continued. “My brother Erik plays both sides brilliantly.

“The idea for Role Tape spawned from a work by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman entitled Persona.”

“I really think he’s going to do something,” Mrs Hopper said this week of Mr Bagger.

“He was smart enough to credit Bergman, for one thing. He didn’t try to pass the idea off as his own. But the skill level,” she continued, “is something else. To know how to do this kind of work at his age is just fantastic.”

In addition to the videos by Miss Wlodarczyk and Mr Bagger, videos were screened by Brian Totillo (Tribute To New York City) of Brookfield; Wendy Burt (Summertime), John S. Bell (Battle Hymn), and Stephanie O’Rourke (D-Tour [Kent Falls]) of Kent; Michael Russo (Degrees of Separation) and Kyle Mangieri (9/11 Tribute) of Monroe; Thomas and Shirley Saunders (The Mighty “G”) of New Milford; and Chris Radomski (APSE –- Music Video), Mike Agius (Off The Hook) and Ed Wolf (The Perfect Pancake) of Newtown.

The ten semifinalists were each presented with a Certificate of Participation during the awards ceremony, and all of the top video producers were invited to discuss with the judges the decision-making process.

“Some of the producers took us up on this offer,” Paula Hopper said, “and it was good for us to be able to share what made their videos really good or what didn’t work. People put a lot of time, and a large emotional investment, into these.”

Greg Van Antwerp, the community access supervisor for Charter Communications in Newtown, was working on editing the videos into a program for Charter’s local access channel this week. Mr Antwerp says the final program will present all of the videos within on program, and he expects the show to run just over 90 minutes.

The editing was expected to be done by the end of this week, and the show will be aired on Charter Channel 21. The James Diaz Memorial Festival will be aired on Sunday, May 25, at 11 am and 7 pm.

The Judges

The panel of judges was Paula Hopper, John F. Sabo, and Dr Laurence Lowry. Among her credits, Mrs Hopper has created films and videos for social, education, and health facilities as well as working as an independent producer, taught filmmaking in the graduate studies program at Western Connecticut State University, and has written and edited pieces as assistant editor for the trade publication EITV (Educational and Industrial TV). She is vice president of the Charter Cable Advisory Council.

For the last ten years Mr Sabo has been the producer and director of programming at WTCH, the educational access cable station at Pomperaug High School. After five years of developing the school’s theater program he initiated plans for a television studio and cable broadcast channel originating from the school’s premises. During this time frame Mr Sabo has been directly and indirectly responsible for the production of more than 1,000 hours of television programming. Several former students are currently working in the entertainment industry at television and film studios.

Mr Sabo has won a number of awards and accolades including recognition from CNN NewSource, Southbury Historical Society, and most recently The Dennis Buckley Community Advocate Award by Skye XIII Cable of Waterbury. He is included in The National Register’s Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals ,2003–04.

Several years ago Mr Sabo co-wrote, produced and directed an award-winning 15-minute video-movie, Does It Make A Sound? He is currently working on a new script, called Long Shot, and plans to begin production for it as a digital video movie later this year.

Dr Lowry has been in love with film and cinema, he wrote recently, “since the age of 4 when [I] experienced Ben Hur in all its MGM Process 65 glory.” That fascination, his biography continues, led him to start reading about film at a very early age and over the years he has amassed “an incredible amount” of knowledge concerning the art, business, technology, and history of film. While having taken film classes at New York University, most of his experience is self-taught.

Dr Lowry is responsible for the establishment of two film clubs at Bethel Cinema: “Thursday Nights with Dr Lowry,” where he introduces films and offers background on the film, its filmmakers or filmmaking in general; and “Sunday Morning Classics with Dr Lowry,” where he picks classic and “neoclassic” films, discusses their significance, and invites audience discussion. He has been selected as a judge for The 2003 Fairfield County Student Film Festival, to be held this summer and hosted by Bethel Cinema.

The competition was conceived in the name of the late James Diaz to honor the spirit of creativity. According to background materials on the competition, it was in keeping with Mr Diaz’s spirit of the pursuit of excellence that entries were viewed and judged based on originality, creative use of the medium, and effectiveness of communication as well as technical know-how.