Student Wins Music Video Award at CUT International Film Fest
Rowan College of South Jersey–Cumberland (RCSJ) student Chris Bruno won the award for Best Music Video at the CUT International Film Festival, held in Millville in September. Bruno, of Vineland, is a sophomore Radio, Television & Film (RTF) student at the college. His award-winning music video, “Crows in a Cave – I Don’t Need This,” is comprised of different genres of rock and metal.
“It’s a blend of alternative rock, alternative metal, grunge, post grunge, gothic rock and shoegaze,” Bruno, an RCSJ–Cumberland Media Productions Club student, said.
The song reveals a message Bruno hopes will resonate with people.
“The whole thing is basically like an allegory for the ongoing trend of content farms on social media,” he said. “Like those channels that post … mean-spirited stuff day after day, week after week [online]. They intend to market it toward kids, and it’s really not for anybody.
“The main message of the video,” he continued, “is that it’s the task of Generations X, Y, and Z to lead Generation Alpha … away from these content farms and to encourage them to watch better, more suitable content for children.”
The CUT International Film Festival is a prestigious event that has taken place at The Levoy Theatre in Millville for the last four years. The festival was founded to celebrate storytelling in the medium of motion pictures but limited to short stories.
Bruno was shocked that he won the Best Music Video award: “Honestly, I didn’t expect it to happen. I was only expecting to be able to put it out there…it’s not even the finished product. It’s a proof of concept. It’s an animatic.”
Bruno explained that an animatic is a short video that’s like a moving storyboard.
“Originally, I planned for the video to be … live action, but after being reminded of the laborious process of scheduling and trying to get my actors together, I decided to make it animated.”
Bruno said using the internet made it easier for him to create the video. “Everything can be done online, and from the safety and confines of everybody’s individual homes. From voice acting to the animation to the editing, all that good stuff. That’s what I decided to stick with,” he said.
Nathaniel Clark, RTF professor and coordinator, RCSJ–Cumberland (pictured above with Bruno), said he is proud of Bruno’s work and accomplishment.
“Chris is a very conscientious student,” Clark said. “He created that video as a proof of concept for a live action short, and it was amazing. Stay tuned for the stop-motion version of ‘Crows in a Cave – I Don’t Need This’ coming soon!”
Bruno’s music video continued an impressive streak of Clark’s students whose short films premiered in the annual festival. In consecutive years, Raven Figueroa-Montero’s The Signal, Michael Seda’s The Last Rites of Nate McCree, Alix Calixto’s Rideshare, and Jacob Colon’s ArtC/Bill Horin, were showcased at CUT.
Bruno noted that being a student at RCSJ has been influential to his growth.
“I was nervous when I first started taking classes here as a freshman, but as I got older and I started taking more classes, I started to get the hang of it,” he said. “All I have to do is work hard, get good grades, take things as they come, and see what comes next.
“I think my experience here at RCSJ has helped a lot with what I want to be able to do with my life, with my future career.”
Bruno’s career goal is to be a multimedia storyteller who shares with the world by putting movies, TV shows, video games and other projects on his YouTube channel.
“I want to be able to use that as a platform for my creative endeavors and I mostly want to focus on music and animation,” he said. That’s basically what I want to do with my life.”
For information about Rowan College of South Jersey’s Communications and Creative & Performing Arts Division, visit RCSJ.edu/ArtsHumanitiehttp://RCSJ.edu/ArtsHumanities.
