There’s a dilemma that every Duke freshman faces when they first move to campus: if you spy a C-1 resting at the circle, should you book it? Should you risk the humiliation of sprinting after a departing bus?
Learning that it usually is never worth booking it is only one of many freshman-year rites. This Friday, the 11th Annual Froshlife Film Festival will premiere student-produced films that specifically highlight the experience of adjusting to college, the Marketplace, C-1s, roommates and more.
Froshlife, an initiative started by both the Division of Student Affairs and Office of Information Technology in 2003, was created to expose students to up-and-coming technology, inspire future filmmakers and most importantly foster friendships within each residence hall. “The goal of Froshlife is about providing the opportunity for community-building for students through film and video,” Director and Assistant Dean of HDRL Clay Adams said. “It’s about capturing the first-year experience especially from the eyes of a freshman.”
Michael Faber, Multimedia Project Studio Manager of the Office of Information Technology (OIT), added, “OIT and Student Affairs wanted to create a program that served our independent needs better in a joint fashion. For OIT, it was about introducing the student body to innovative technology, and for student affairs, it was about a vehicle for students to be able to talk about their freshman experience.”
Each dormitory works in a team to create and produce the film, allocating the director, producer, actor, writer and editor responsibilities within their group.
“Because East is structured the way it is with only freshmen, there’s almost a healthy competition between the dorms as they make this video,” last year’s winner and the Froshlife committee’s student representative King Lu said.
In 2003, before the era of YouTube and Facebook, lending out laptops and handheld video cameras to Froshlife teams was considered novel. Although media and technology have been revamped and revolutionized in the past decade, certain elements of Froshlife remain the same.
“What still hasn’t changed at all is what the freshman experience is and how freshmen tell that story. We watched the movies this morning, and that same skeleton of a story could have been told in 2003 as it was today,” Faber said. “The core archetypal story of struggling with academics, fitting in or first love are all the same.”
Each film is limited to seven minutes and is judged by its relevance to the theme, story, creativity, innovative use of technology, execution, editing and acting performance. While the past two years relied on a combination of a panel of judges and audience vote to determine the winner, this year Froshlife will not have any judges. According to Faber, Froshlife decided to remove the judges because the audience always agreed with the judges in regards to the best film.
Filming and producing the Froshlife shorts also serves as a time for freshmen to look back on their eventful, busy first few months of college. Freshman Serges Himbaza, the leader for the Jarvis team, describes the experience as “reflective.”
“I think the purpose of Froshlife is to get you to reflect on the freshman experience in relation to you and your dorm,” Himbaza said. “It also allows you to reflect with a group of people who are going through the same things, providing for a more enriched view of what it means to be a freshman.”
Even though Froshlife occurs during both tenting and rush season, Faber describes how it has still paved its own niche.
“This can be an outlet for people who didn’t fit into rushing, tenting or all the other activities that were going on at this time. It tries to latch on certain kinds of people and draw connections within residence halls that perhaps weren’t drawn out by other programming,” Faber said.
Some freshmen found that events such as tenting only enhanced their projects rather than hindering them. Freshman Tiana Horn of Blackwell used the UNC game for one of her scenes in her group’s film.
“I definitely don’t regret it,” Horn said, about both tenting and producing a film. “I wrote the script in my tent. It all worked out.”
The 11th annual Froshlife Film Festival takes place tomorrow, Mar. 1, at 8 p.m. in Richard White Lecture Hall.
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