RIT Sweeps Sleepless in Lake Placid 24 Hr film competition

Four RIT Film Students: Harlan Doolittle, Chantal Massuh, Meghan Connolly, Christine Lodato with Team advisor, Lecturer, Dave Sluberski sweep awards at 6th Sleepless in Lake Placid 24 Hr film competition. The Film “Chet’s Pet” won for Best Film (Robin Pell Award), Audience choice along with Best actress Cynthia Wilbur. At 6:00AM the day of travel, the 4 required elements were emailed to teams.

1. A scene inside or outside Lake Placid’s historic Palace theater
2. Dancing
3. Taxidermy
4. Any two of the following lines:

• Living here day by day, you think it’s the center of the world.  You believe nothing will change.
• The thread’s broken.
• Life isn’t like the movies.
• There is no future.  There is only the past.
• Happy endings only happen in movies.
• The story’s not over yet.

It also had to include 5 actors.

The next day at 8:00AM approximately 25 actors were onsite and teams via a lottery type system picked actors according to the script they hopefully had written during previous travel day. At 10:00AM they could start and had to submit completed film with proper credits and no creative assistance from advisor by noon next day.

The teams were provided housing at Northwood School, the oldest  coeducational private boarding school located in an old, classic Lake Placid building from the turn of the century.  That evening all films  were screened and the jury consisting of award winning director Craig Macneill , writer and director of Film and television Gregory Orr, and Michael Gaston, veteran actor of Film and Television announced the results.

To read more about the film and the write-up by the Lake Placid Film Forum, please visit:  http://lpfilmforum.com/2012/06/18/rit-sweeps-awards-at-6th-silp-competition-wilbur-and-rozakis-best-actors