CMU Filmmakers Need Your Vote To Win $100K
By Shilo Rea
Three Carnegie Mellon University filmmakers are competing to win $100K.
“We’ve Met Before” is a short film directed by Yulin Kuang (DC’12), who majored in creative writing and international relations and politics in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Two 2011 graduates from the College of Fine Arts are also involved in the film, with Zack Wallnau behind the camera and Jennifer Hwang as the production designer.
The contest is a part of a collaboration between Twilight creator Stephenie Meyer, Lionsgate, Women in Film and the crowdsourcing platform Tongal to promote female filmmakers. Each filmmaker received an initial $50K to create a film based on back stories from Meyer's 'The Twilight Saga.”
As reported by Entertainment Weekly, Meyer has a personal motivation for supporting a female empowerment project in Hollywood.
“In any given room you are talking to 50 male directors and one female director pitching for the same project,” said Meyer. “It’s been really exciting to do something, maybe not on a huge scale, but on a small scale to get more female voices out there,”
Kuang’s “We’ve Met Before” is set in the official Twilight Universe and is about the first meeting of Alice Cullen and Jasper Hale.
Seven finalists have been chosen to compete for the $100K top prize. Voting is open to the public and ends at midnight on Tuesday, July 21.
Kuang’s other recent short film is "I Ship It,” which was funded and distributed by Ron Howard's New Form Digital and presented at Sundance by YouTube during the official narrative shorts program.
Learn more about the 'Storytellers: New Voices of the Twilight Saga' shorts competition