By the time the movie “Trailerpark” premiered on June 7th of this year, the all undergraduate crew of the film had spent almost a year, not to mention over $50,000, on its production. They even burned a trailer to the ground. Contrary to popular belief, though, the work didn’t end there.
The film’s crew has been hard at work since the premier, re-cutting the film, shortening it, redoing the audio, and, most importantly, devising a strategy for festival submissions. “Trailerpark” was screened at the Lake Placid Film Festival shortly after the premier. The book’s author Russell Banks first saw the film at Lake Placid, and gave the filmmakers the go-head to screen it at other festivals.
The next item of business for “Trailerpark” is a private screening in Los Angeles for OU alumni in the film business and other industry members interested in the film. From that point, the production’s higher-ups will submit to dozens of festivals and see who is interested in screening their movie.
In an interview with the film’s coordinating producer Conor Hogan, he told me that the filmmakers don’t realistically expect their movie to show at Sundance or Cannes. They don’t expect it to win a ton of prize money or be picked up by a distributions company. They do hope, however, that the film will be recognized for what it is: A staggering achievement in production by a team of undergraduates. Hogan hopes that other universities will use the production of “Trailerpark” as a model for a new way to teach video production.
Check out some images of the students hard at work:
