Airplane and rocket models hung from the sapphire-colored ceiling of Planet Hollywood Times Square’s restaurant in the heart of New York City. Bright television screens illuminated the dining room. Crowds of partygoers danced to the upbeat music in a ballroom space near the red and black tables.
Senior Marcus Emery stood in the middle of this scene on Oct. 9, still shocked that his animation, which had been selected for the All American High School Film Festival, had brought him to New York.
“I never meant to turn [my animation] into anything,” Emery said. “It was just supposed to be a test video. Then I looked at it, and I was like, ‘I kind of like that. Let’s see where it goes.’”
Emery first entered his short 2D animation, “Dooble — the Short Winged Quail,” into a local competition, the Bay Area Teen Festival. The film depicts a quail who struggles to fly because of his short wings. He remembers the local competition as an eye-opening experience because he had never competed in a film festival before.
At the film festival, many attendees asked for Emery’s business card. Emery said he didn’t have a business card, so when they asked for one, he ripped off a piece of scratch paper and wrote his contact information on it.
Later, inspired by his first-place win at the Bay Area film festival, Emery explored other festivals online. Many festivals were closed or too expensive for him to enter, Emery said. However, the All American High School Film Festival had an admission fee of $10.
Two months after the submitting his project, Emery received an email inviting him to attend the festival in New York. The letter shocked him.
“At that point, I was like ‘Whoa. What do I do now? Do I have to go to New York now?’” Emery said.
After receiving the notification, Emery and his parents looked into the festival, discovering that it was an international competition involving 49 states and 13 countries. Additionally, around 15,000 entries were submitted to the contest.
The festival lasted from Oct. 7-11 and consisted of a pre-party at Planet Hollywood Times Square, film screenings on the fourth floor of AMC Times Square and a college fair.
Through the pre-party and college fair, Emery acquainted himself with other students from countries like South Korea and Pakistan and representatives from different film colleges, like the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Emery said he still keeps in touch with these people today, especially the SCAD representatives, who offered him constructive criticism on his portfolio.
At the awards ceremony, the judges nominated Emery as a finalist out of the 30 animations selected for the festival, making his first trip to New York all the more memorable.
For Emery, being a finalist in the festival gave him more confidence in his own work and opened his eyes to filmmaking as a potential career. Filmmaking had always been a hobby for him, but he had never realized that he could pursue it in the future, and he attributes this realization partly to MAP.
Through the Media Arts Program, Emery said that he has found his niche and escaped a lot of academic pressure. He hopes to continue pursuing film in the future, whether it’s as a hobby or as a job.
“I want to say, ‘Don’t worry about what other people think,” Emery said. “That sounds really cheesy, but you know what? If you enjoy something, find a way to do that.”