{"id":464528,"date":"2026-10-13T07:08:56","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T07:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/464528\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T07:08:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T07:08:56","slug":"uta-short-film-festival-showcases-student-creativity-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/464528\/","title":{"rendered":"UTA short film festival showcases student creativity | Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\" alt=\"People sit in Brazos Park watching a film.\" class=\"img-responsive lazyload full blur\" width=\"1763\" height=\"1175\" data- data-\/><\/p>\n<p>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6acdccb6da326.image.jpg\" alt=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" loading=\"lazy\" height=\"133\" width=\"200\"\/><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Attendees watch films during Mavs, Camera, Action on Oct. 12 at Brazos Park. There were three categories for the festival\u2019s awards.<\/p>\n<p>                                    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theshorthorn.com\/users\/profile\/General%20Mason%20Starks\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Photo By General Mason Starks <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Students shared their short films with their peers Monday at Brazos Park. <\/p>\n<p>The films differed, ranging from a story of life and death to a film about the grief of growing up. <\/p>\n<p>Maritza Perez, programming director for EXCEL Campus Activities, said she wanted to bring back an event the organization previously hosted, which is what inspired the film festival. <\/p>\n<p>Perez said getting exposure for the event and securing the student films was difficult in the beginning. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs it got closer to the due date of the short film submission form, we actually surprisingly got more films than we expected,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<p>EXCEL programming directors chose which films to include and reached out to the Cinematic Art Mavericks, who helped judge and review the top three films. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy favorite part was getting to see some of our talented Mavericks submit their films and being able to watch their creativity come to life,\u201d Perez said. <\/p>\n<p>The Cinematic Art Mavericks offered a technical perspective in judging, club president Victor Sanchez said. <\/p>\n<p>Sanchez said he tried to remain unbiased when judging films as a lot of filmmakers with previous experience submitted. He took into consideration that some submissions were students\u2019 first time making a film. <\/p>\n<p>He said he watched each film twice to understand the main idea. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was just the idea of \u2018How does it make me feel at the end of the day?\u2019\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cIf I watch this, do I get a sense of the story and the characters?\u201d <\/p>\n<p>He said film-related events and classes are often limited to the Fine Arts Building. The event helped break that barrier by connecting students who are interested in film with the broader UTA community. <\/p>\n<p>                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\" alt=\"A man speaks into a microphone.\" class=\"img-responsive lazyload full blur\" width=\"1763\" height=\"1175\" data- data-\/><\/p>\n<p>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6acdccb63e709.image.jpg\" alt=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" loading=\"lazy\" height=\"133\" width=\"200\"\/><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Victor Sanchez, Cinematic Art Mavericks president, speaks into a microphone during Mavs, Camera, Action event on Oct. 12 at Brazos Park. Over 10 films were submitted to the festival.<\/p>\n<p>                                    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theshorthorn.com\/users\/profile\/General%20Mason%20Starks\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Photo By General Mason Starks <\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt puts the filmmaking community\u00a0on the map in a way,\u201d Sanchez said. <\/p>\n<p>Alex Hathcock, director of \u2018The Guide to Heaven or Hell\u2019 and Cinematic Arts sophomore, said his film was inspired by the Grim Reaper. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve always loved that mythology of the character, and I really wanted to make a film about the Grim Reaper,\u201d Hathcock said. <\/p>\n<p>He said he began writing the script in April 2026 and filmed over the summer. The shoot, originally planned to be seven days long, was shortened to a three-day shoot consisting of two 12-hour days back to back. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHaving these experiences just to get our work, get our message, get our names out there, it\u2019s really meaningful for EXCEL and for CAM to put these type of events on,\u201d Hathcock said. <\/p>\n<p>Business marketing freshman Kadeyn Micah Vaughm Aulton directed and wrote \u201817 Summers Later,\u2019 a short film that showcases how it feels to be a student leaving their friends. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t need this super deep film that had hidden meanings and all of that,\u201d Aulton said. \u201cI just needed a film that was able to relate with the average viewer who was going to college, or felt that feeling of alone, helplessness.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>He was nervous about submitting his film to the competition and felt that other creators at the event would be ahead of him. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI realized they are and that\u2019s the point of me joining the film festival to learn from them and see who I would like to work with because I\u2019m not a film major,\u201d Aulton said. <\/p>\n<p>@kh.kennedyharvey<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theshorthorn.com\/news\/campus\/uta-short-film-festival-showcases-student-creativity\/mailto:news-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">news-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attendees watch films during Mavs, Camera, Action on Oct. 12 at Brazos Park. There were three categories for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1086,116,118,117,223],"class_list":["post-464528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-campus","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}