Bettendorf filmmakers are up for MTV award

By David Burke / QUAD-CITY TIMES / November 17, 2005

For the second year in a row, Bluebox Limited is up for top honors in a student film contest sponsored by MTV.

mtvU is a college-based spinoff of the popular cable TV channel, reaching 6.5 million students on 730 campuses nationwide.

The two were semifinalists last year as well, reaching the top three.

Two of Bluebox’s entries — “Her Summer” and “University Heights” — are among the 10 up for honors this year. While last year’s competition was for short films, this year it’s for trailers, or coming attractions-type commercials, for movies.

“We cut trailers from those feature films,” Beck said. “The competition is, basically, that you make the trailer and, if you win, MTV will produce the film. If we win, we get the option to produce a feature film of what we have produced on a much larger scale. We can sort of go back and redo it, in a sense.”

Votes can be placed online at www.mtvu.com/contests/best_film_on_campus/2005/ through Nov. 8. The winners get a home theater system and — more importantly for the pair of 21-year-old filmmakers — a development deal.

The winner will be announced in mid-December.

“We were really fortunate to get in the semifinals, and surprised by it,” Beck said. “We hope we can use this opportunity to launch onto something bigger.”

The two are working on the screenplay for their next movie, titled “Coast.”

“Her Summer,” released last year, won Woods an award for best screenplay and won Bluebox an award for best student film.