BELLVILLE — Movies and visual media have always been of interest to Sam Brandes. Now he has a film award validating his passion.
Brandes, 18, serves as the media officer for the Clear Fork Marching Band and has been accepted to the Ohio University school of film.
The future Bobcat will bring with him the confidence of winning the Detroit Regional Final of the International Youth Silent Film Festival for his short, silent movie, Colorless.
A summary of the film is included in a spoiler alert at the end of this story.
The movie was shot over three days around Bellville, where he lives. Its run-time is three minuets long.
“We were able to come up with a deeper analogy for the film,” Brandes said. “A life without love and friendship is a life without color. It’s colorless. Now he has someone to feel less lonely.”
Helping Brandes with the film was Justin Stewart, who is his assistant with the marching band media work.
Winning the award has given Brandes confidence and assured his choice in a career path.
“It really gave me a sense of vindication,” he said.
The Detroit award comes with a $1,000 prize and allows him to move on to Portland’s International Youth Silent Film Festival on June 7. The money will go towards his schooling.
His interest in movie making began in 2014, when he went to the International Youth Silent Film Festival, which was held in Mansfield at the Renaissance Theatre.
Brandes entered his first film, In A Pickle, to the festival but it did not get selected for an award. He applied twice more but never found success.
“I kind of gave up on filmmaking,” he said. “But then I became nedia officer and that changed things around.”
Brandes said he currently works on episodes of The Band Office, a parody of the popular sitcom The Office, which starred Steve Carrell.
SPOILER ALERT: The 2020 IYSFF first-place flick, features himself as a lonely man in a black-and-white movie. After meeting a friend in the real world, he finds his way out of the movie and into a world of color.
Towards the end of the movie, he has to go back. His friends choose to go with him. The final scene shows his world now has color.
