Baylor Film & Digital Media Faculty Win Audience Award at Festival
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Media contact: Terry Goodrich, (254) 710-3321
WACO, Texas (Aug. 18, 2017) – The film “Blur Circle,” a collaborative effort between two Baylor University professors, won the Audience Award for Best Feature Drama at the 2017 Woods Hole Film Festival.
“Blur Circle” director Chris Hansen and writer/producer Brian Elliott are both faculty members in Baylor’s department of film and digital media. Hansen is a professor and chair of the department; Elliott is a senior lecturer.
Several of their students served as members of the film’s production crew, rotating through different jobs and receiving advice from experienced professionals.
“There’s no way to really know if you want to work in the world of film production until you’ve actually done it. So, I think the students experiencing the creative energy and collaborative camaraderie that can occur on a film set, while also enduring what inevitably end up being very long hours during very hot days over many weeks, gives them a window into what that life is like,” Elliott said.
“Blur Circle” tells the story of Jill Temple, a single mother who continues to search for her missing son two years after his disappearance. She relentlessly pursues every lead until meeting a man with a mysterious past who causes her to look at her life from a different perspective.
Hansen said he thought “Blur Circle” received a positive response from the audience members because they sympathized with the main character.
“I think people connect with characters in movies dealing with painful realities, and in this case – a story about a woman who has lost her child – it hits close to home for anyone who has a family. We also worked hard to get the tone of the film right, so that it also had moments of humor and light in the midst of this troubling story, and I think the combination worked for people,” Hansen said.
by Kassidy Woytek , student newswriter, (254) 710-6805
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