- film school is a trip -

Welcome to Sam Goes Nuts!, my little Super 8mm satire about the absurdity of film school.

Okay, so there's this guy named Sam. He's in film school, right? And he's getting hit from all sides by demands. Has an essay due next morning but the guys in the next dorm room have the rock music cranked too high (which conveniently provides our opening music); girlfriend is calling to complain; and Bob - the film-student who think's he's a movie-mogul - shows up to whip up Sam's enthusiasm about their next short film ("I'm tellin' yah, it's gonna be GREAT!!!... ALL THE BLOOD!!!"). Yadda yadda yadda. (...So many film school youngsters see themselves this way.) But then Sam remembers he has a CAMERA PROFICIENCY TEST (!!!) the next morning (which he needs to do or he can't shoot the freakin' film, right?)... 

Anyway, it all culminates in a really funny scene. It was so funny... It was so funny my film profs wouldn't show it at the end-of-year film-student screening because... well, maybe 'cause it kinda hit certain things about film school on the mark. (Even though they laughed at it too.)

All I know is they showed it to another class while I wasn't there, and some guy in that class complemented me in the campus pub. He said he was laughing so hard he was crying, but at the same time he was too scared to laugh out-loud... in case it got him in trouble with the professors.

We shot it on grainy black-and-white Super 8mm film, right around the time I discovered punk rock - 1987 (don't laugh, I'm from a dinky town out in the boondocks). It has that punk rock feel. And it looks really cool, too - way better on the original film than on this video dupe (from which these screenshots were captured). (I transfered it to video by literally shooting it off a film projection screen; because Super 8mm sync-sound systems ain't exactly a common format for storing motion picture these days.)

And we really did destroy a camera in the final sequence. I smashed that puppy to pieces. (Thanks to Steve Pitch, our  film department's technician - white labcoat and everything - for providing us with a broken model.)

Did I say we had fun? Absolutely.

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- The Making of.. -

- Credits... -