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Camp K Lev winners announced
The AICP's trailer competition for emerging creative artists awards The Lev to Caralyn Moore [left] of Optimus for Editing; Emmalyn Meyers [middle] of Vaudeville Sound Group for Sound Design; and April Faison [right] of Mr. Wonderful - Northern Lights for Graphics.
The Camp Kuleshov trailer competition for emerging creative artists has announced its Grand Prize winners for Editing, Sound Design, and Graphics as it gears up for its 2023 contest.
The top prize, The Lev, named after Russian film guru Lev Kuleshov, was awarded to Caralyn Moore of Optimus for Editing, Emmalyn Meyers of Vaudeville Sound Group for Sound Design, and April Faison of Mr. Wonderful - Northern Lights for Graphics. Their entries were evaluated against other category winners from Camp K competitions held in AICP chapters across the US.
Moore won for her taut, suspenseful recasting of the 1967 Mel Brooks comedy The Producers into a Neo-noir genre. Meyers took home the prize for her hilarious, video game-inspired sound design of an epic car chase in the 1998 caper film Ronin, and Faison was honoured for her evocative title sequence for the 2004 noirish thriller Collateral. These Lev winners can be seen below, and all of the 2022 Camp K winners, can be found on the Camp K website.
Each Lev winner receives £1,000, provided by Camp K sponsor Musicbed + Filmsupply. An AICP Supporting Partner, Musicbed also made selections from its production music library available to Camp K entrants free of charge.
Caralyn Moore
Emmalyn Meyers
April Faison
Camp K is designed to offer emerging talent a chance to enhance their creative and craft problem-solving skills while gaining access to invaluable mentorship opportunities. The competition challenges entrants to re-imagine trailers for existing films as something new and different. This year's source films for each category, competition rules, and objectives are available on the Camp K website. The deadline for entries is 22nd September 2023 at 11.59 pm GMT. All Camp K winners will be announced during events held in participating chapters later this autumn.
New to the competition this year is a category for music composition, which joins the Sound Design category as the second audio-focused challenge for entrants. The music brief is to score a 90-second passage from one of two films that have no music score at all: Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror film The Birds and Joel and Ethan Coen's 2007 crime thriller No Country For Old Men.
According to Chris Franklin, Owner and Editor at Big Sky Edit in New York, the addition of a music category aims to broaden the pool of young creatives participating in the competition and better reflect not only AICP membership but also the post-production community as a whole. Franklin notes that young creatives at music companies have been taking part in Camp K for some time, often submitting for its Sound Design category, but now they have a chance to showcase their talent for original composition. He adds that the music winner could come from any discipline since anyone eligible for entering Camp K can enter any category.
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As always, the roster of source films for each Camp K category ranges from the obscure to the mainstream. In Editing, it includes A Star is Born (all four Hollywood versions), 1990's hip hop comedy House Party, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and 2018's Marvel superhero film Venom. In Sound Design, it includes 1974's crime thriller The Conversation and the 2014 supernatural suspense film Unfriended. And in Graphic Design, it ranges from 1979's Apocalypse Now to the 2021 remake of Dune.
Further, adds Franklin, “we’ve tightened up the descriptions of the genres that the entrants can shoot for when reimagining these films across the categories. We feel that will help them zero in on the tone of what they’re trying to do with their entries. It should make the competition a bit more challenging, and a bit more strategic, which is one of the goals of Camp K in the first place – to sharpen their strategic thinking and apply those lessons to the client work they’re doing every day.”
Participation in the Camp K competition is open to junior-level creatives, as well as admin and entry-level employees at AICP member post-production and production companies. Students and interns sponsored by a member company can also enter Camp K, as well as junior-level employees at music, sound, and audio post-companies that are members of the Association of Music Producers (AMP).
