FSU Script Wins Sprite Refreshing Films Competition

John Wikstrom was bitterly disappointed his first year of Film School when he found out that Coke was no longer running its Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Competition. He’d been tracking FSU winners for years and he already knew what film he wanted to make in his bid for fame and fortune. Lucky for him he is flexible and smart, because even though he didn’t get to make a spot for Coke this year, he did manage to win the newest incarnation of their contest, and is being flown out to L.A. to be feted at the Los Angeles Film Festival this month.

For years the Coca-Cola Company has run a contest for students at the nation’s top film schools, and Florida State has had its share of winners. This year, the company decided to shake things up and completely revamped the contest, renaming it the Sprite Refreshing Films Contest, and focusing most of their attention at the high school level. Where once film school students wrote and directed short films featuring Coke, the new contest takes scripts written by students at the top film schools and has crews made up mainly of high school students shoot the films.

They invited film school students to submit short screenplays that embodied the theme, “Ingenuity takes the unexpected path and is rewarded for it.” No longer were the films required to conspicuously place product.  As a matter of fact, they weren’t meant to be ads; they actually wanted to produce short films of 5-10 minutes. Film school students could also apply to direct and produce the films, though no one from Florida State participated in that part of the program.

Once the screenplays were submitted, six were chosen to be made into short films. Wikstrom, a first-year BFA student, wrote one of the chosen scripts. His script was then made into a short film by a crew of teenagers under the supervision of Dreaming Tree Films, a production company that specializes in providing teens with hands-on experience in filmmaking. Six different film crews shot in six different cities, with a celebrity actor attached to each film.

Wikstrom’s script, “Cease and Deceased,” was shot in Los Angeles and featured Donald Faison of Scrubs and Remember the Titans.  After they were made, all of the films were subject to voting by the general public, and evaluation by a “Green Ribbon” panel of industry professionals. Not only did the film based on Wikstrom’s script receive the bulk of the popular vote, but it also received the highest scores by the industry panel. It was declared the winner, and will be screening at the L.A. Film Festival this month, headlining its own premiere event during the opening weekend of the festival. Wikstrom, who will be at the premiere, will have the opportunity to attend networking events and seminars during his visit. He will also be able to offer nuggets of wisdom to the winning high school students who dream of one day attending film school.