Attendees of the 26th Annual Pencil Mileage Club Film Fest at the Frida Cinema were treated to a full flight of student animations celebrating another academic year of hard work on Friday.
Student works included both rough cuts and finished films, mostly lasting a few minutes long. Film topics included coming-of-age and the grown-up aspirations of small animals.
This is the second year the Pencil Mileage Club Film Fest was held at the Frida Cinema, where the 200-person capacity showing rooms could meet the fully booked RSVP headcount.
Introductory remarks were delivered by President Mari Chin, a fifth-year illustration major, and Vice President Katie Casey, a fourth-year animation major. Following was a speech by Librarian Mario Lugo, a second-year animation major, about the social value of ritual and the importance of a space for artists to congregate.
The first half of the festival featured solo projects that played on animation tropes to elicit laughs from the audience.
“Dance of the Mouse” by fifth-year animation major Briseida Marquez, is about a mouse who evades recital hall guards to do ballet. “Tragical Girl” by Sonya Nalapraya, a fifth-year animation major, is about a lightweight wallflower’s losing duel with soju.
Pencil Mileage Club Secretary Jason Belleza, a sixth-year animation major, was part of the organizing committee for the film’s program. Aside from guidelines which keep the films suitable for most audiences, submitting a piece for screening was even open to students outside of the animation program.
“I think this film festival is really cool at showing how it’s (the production) broken down into each department,” Belleza said. “Maybe it’s not the finished polished product, but seeing it in the storyboard stage, you can tell what they wanted to prioritize, whether it be character, acting or story beats.”
After a 25-minute intermission, the second half of festival programming featured group projects. Some films were produced for the club’s 24-hour film challenge held last October, while other shorts were more fleshed out.
Among the works in this latter group were finalists of short film festivals. “Dog Brain,” an official selection for the Watsonville Film Festival, is about a puppy who attends college to acquire an education and go to work like its owner. “Spacebreak Rodeo” is a retrofuturistic jailbreak story of two outlaws and lovers, deemed a finalist for the New York Short Animation Festival. Both films were produced by Studio 105, an animation team comprising CSUF students and alumni.
Other highlights from the group showcase included “Compy,” by the Compy production team, a polished slapstick comedy about a dinosaur who plots to steal pterosaur eggs, and “Flavortown,” a charming short about a dog who learns to skate.
Nathan Oliveros, a second-year studio arts major, worked on “Flavortown” as a background designer. For him, working on the film about a shift in perspective was an opportunity to adapt his vision to other artists’ intentions.
“The biggest challenge for working on the film was finding a concise vision between all of us because I know what I have in mind for the perspective and the angles,” Oliveros said. “I really want to work with my 24-hour team again and we’re going to end up doing it in October again.”
Having been acquainted with members of the Pencil Mileage Club, Samuel Peredo, a third-year mechanical engineering major, felt especially moved by the community behind the films.
“It really showed — the group ones — how good a group can be especially when they work together and you can see the synergy in a lot of the peoples’ arts and the animatics they made,” Peredo said.
The final screening of the night was a hot potato sequence produced by many animators with a cartoon bomb, the club’s logo, in place of a potato to commemorate the end of the academic year.
The club held a lively after-party across the street from the Frida Cinema, where attendees and organizers posed for photos in front of a Pencil Mileage Club backdrop decorated with hand drawings by club members.
“I want people who submitted to walk away with a sense of accomplishment, like, ‘I did this. My stuff was on the big screen,’” Chin said.