East Brunswick library seeks ‘Heroes’ in film competition

By JEREMY GROSSMAN
Staff Writer

EAST BRUNSWICK — The next Martin Scorsese might be living in East Brunswick.

The East Brunswick Public Library is accepting film submissions for its second annual Record.Play Film Competition and Festival, and all East Brunswick residents are encouraged to submit entries.

Film submissions will be accepted in three categories: youth (age 12 and under), teens (ages 13-19) and adults (age 20 and older).

A panel of judges will select a first- and second-place winner in each category. All films entered must be original work. The first-place winner in each age group will receive a prize valued at $100, and the second place winner of each age group will receive a prize valued at $50.

All films will be screened at the 2015 Record.Play Film Festival at 7 p.m. June 25.

The theme for this year’s festival is “Heroes.” According to Maryann Ralph, assistant director at the East Brunswick Public Library, that theme can be interpreted in any way.

“Yes, you have the obvious superheroes, and that’s fine,” Ralph said. “But you really can look at it like, ‘I know somebody that does great things for my community, and I want to use this opportunity to shine a spotlight on that person,’ or, ‘I have this crazy idea for this action adventure movie, and I have this crazy antihero that’s going to save the day.’

“I feel like you can make it very personal. You can make it purely creative, imaginative, speculative storytelling — and you can do whatever you’re comfortable with as a filmmaker. You can use this theme, and it can be comedy, it can be action, it could be a drama, it could be a documentary.”

Entries will be evaluated on how they interpret the theme, visual and audio quality and editing skills. Films must be a minimum of five minutes and not exceed 15 minutes in length.

The Record.Play Film Competition was created after the library applied for and received a contract award from the New Jersey State Library and LibraryLinkNJ, providing $7,500 to create a media lab at the library. The media lab consists of five iMac computers loaded with software.

“We had come up with the idea of a film competition because that’s what this lab is all about, right? Making digital content,” Ralph said. “We have all of these different kinds of software that you can create digital film, so we’re like, ‘Let’s do a film competition.’ ”

Residents can use the software provided by the library to make their films, but are not required to, Ralph said.

Although this is the second year the film competition is being held, it is the first year that the competition is open to all ages.

“Last year, we just opened it up for teens,” Ralph said. “We got some great submissions, and we got some feedback from some younger kids, and we got some feedback from adults like, ‘I would’ve liked to have done this.’ So we said, ‘OK, for next year, it’s a no-brainer — we’re opening it up to everybody.’ ”

Unlike last year’s competition — in which filmmakers were asked to create videos promoting the library — this year’s competition can branch out into any form of storytelling that interprets the theme of “Heroes,” Ralph said.

She expects the ‘‘Heroes’’ theme to spark a broad spectrum of submissions.

“People are really going to interpret this differently from one another, so I’m actually really excited to see the entries that we get.”

As for what advice she has for the filmmakers, Ralph said they should remember that the storyline and editing components are both important.

“Stay true to your story — and you can have a great story — but the editing is an important piece of it. Don’t forget the editing,” she said. “That can make or break you.”

Submissions must be received no later than May 26. Rules and complete submission guidelines can be found online at www.ebpl.org/recordplay.