OC student film hits many film festivals

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A film produced by Oklahoma Christian University students, faculty and recent graduates is turning heads at multiple film festivals around the state.

The production, “Dead Tired,” is about a young, narcoleptic man who volunteers to test an experimental drug, but experiences strange side effects during his sleep.

“‘Dead Tired’ is a film that began as a part of our Advanced Creative Productions class here at OC in the spring of 2012,” Adjunct Faculty for Communications David Jurney said. “The goals for the class were to study directing and to produce a short film. It was a pretty audacious plan because we had to come up with an idea, then we had to write it, refine it, cast it, then shoot it and do everything we could before the end of the semester.”

Jurney supervised his students, assisted in the film and is credited as producer and lighting director. He also helped write the score. The class consisted of six students: alumni Logan Rine, Emily Eldridge, Jose Cruz, Cameron Sutherland, Jason Oser and Daniel Warren. Each student played a major role in the film’s production.

From the beginning, the team agreed to work beyond the course requirements and strive for something greater.

“One of the goals we set in that class when we started the semester though, is that we make this short film with the goal of getting it into film festivals; not as a student project, but just to get it into film festivals, and we did,” Jurney said.

According to senior Tiffani Seeley, who was not in the class but helped in the film, Jurney sacrificed as much time as his students did for the film.

“He gives up so much for his students,” Seeley said. “There would be nights when they were shooting until [early] in the morning. He gave up time with his family to work on the film with his students. He knows his stuff, that’s why he’s a professor.”

Jurney admits that the project did require a lot of effort from both him and his students.

“Our running joke throughout the film was we were working ourselves, and we were staying up late, and we were ‘dead tired,’” Jurney said. “When we actually shot it, there were nights when we were shooting until 4 a.m., while they’re still going to school.”

Alumnus Cameron Sutherland, who operated as the assistant director, reiterates that the film required a huge amount of time from each student’s life.

“[The project] resulted in many all-nighters,” Sutherland said. “It’s one of the toughest projects I could think of. An average film shoot is 12 hours at least, so you have to work around [everyone’s] different schedules.”

Jurney states that high-class equipment has been a big help in the overall quality of the film.

“One of the things we do have that we are blessed by in that class is that we have the resources of a Sony digital cinema camera,” Jurney said. “One of the things I told [the class] was we were able to start shooting this and say, ‘Feature films have been shot on a camera just like this, and you’re getting that opportunity to work with it.’ That’s one of the nice things is we’ve gotten the support to have the editing equipment and editing software … to do what we need to do.”

The team also had the opportunity to use a $70,000 steady-cam rig through a personal connection of a student in the class.

Perhaps the greatest reason for the film’s success was the team’s willingness to sacrifice for the project long after they received their grade in the class.

“People in the class bought into, ‘This is more than just a grade,’” Jurney said. “They were committed past that and they kind of had to be, because when the semester ended, they got their grade, but we still worked and finished the project. It was more to us than just those four months of school.”

According to Sutherland, now a multimedia designer for Wilspec Technologies, he worked on the film long after the end of the semester.

“It resulted in us working on it after I was nine months graduated,” Sutherland said. “We didn’t finish until the next December. It took up most of my time my last semester and then continued on post-graduation, so it’s been a pretty huge time investment.”

The film received entry into several prominent Oklahoma festivals.

“We were accepted into the Bare Bones International Film Festival in Muskogee, [Okla.], and the Trail Dance Film Festival down in Duncan, [Okla.], and just recently we were accepted to the Red Dirt International Film Festival, which is awesome because they don’t accept just anyone,” Sutherland said. “They have hundreds of submissions and they select a handful.”

The Red Dirt Film Festival based in Stillwater, Okla. reviews submissions from all over the globe. The festival took place on Friday Oct. 26 and Saturday Oct. 27 and the film screened at the Noble Research Center on the Oklahoma State University Campus.

According to Jurney, producing the film was a great accomplishment for everyone involved.

“I think we worked well together and had a good thought for what we wanted it to be like,” said Jurney. “It was good to see everybody passionate about doing this, because it’s a lot of work. You have to have some passion about it and some excitement to get it done.”