3 KC filmmakers win Student Academy Award

Three student animators from the Kansas City Art Institute won a silver medal this weekend from the Student Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

For Isaiah Powers, Jeremy Casper and Stuart Bury, Saturday’s ceremony capped a week of meetings and meals with powerful film industry insiders as guests of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The also received a $3,000 grant for their short film, “Dried Up.”

The Student Academy Awards recognize films in documentary, narrative, animation and alternative categories. This year’s presenters were directors Penelope Spheeris and Henry Selick and “Hurt Locker” star Jeremy Renner.

“This opens up so many more opportunities,” Casper, 27, told the Associated Press. “I feel like we have some weight to knock on some doors.”

Past winners in the competition include Spike Lee, Robert Zemeckis, Pixar chief John Lasseter, “Up” director Pete Docter and “South Park” creator Trey Parker. Honorees of the Student Academy Awards have gone on to earn 40 Oscar nominations and seven statuettes.

This year’s finalists came from as far away as the United Kingdom to attend meetings at the Writers Guild, Directors Guild and the American Society of Cinematographers. They dined with the academy’s governors and watched each other’s work at its famous theater.

Casper said meeting successful filmmakers helped demystify the profession.

“They go through the same struggles that we do when we make a film. They’re talking about the same things,” he said. “(Now) we don’t have to put them up on this untouchable pedestal.”

Made over several months in a basement near the KCIA campus, “Dried Up” is a stop-motion short about an old man who scavenges a drought-stricken landscape for items with which he builds an cloud-busting machine which could bring rain to his parched community

source:kansascity.com