The short film I Met Her in the Coffee Shop won the “Best of Fest” award at the inaugural Cornfed Film Fest in Macomb.
The plot for movie, by filmmaker Erik Hogan of Las Vegas, NV, is described as “A heartbroken dude gets hit in the face by love ... literally.”
Hogan said this is the first competition in which he entered the film. He said the award will encourage him to enter it in other competitions.
He had not heard of Macomb before being asked to enter the Cornfed Film Fest.
“Believe it or not, a friend of mine posted my movie on Facebook and Nancy Crossman, who is on the (Cornfed) committee, saw the movie on-line because we're mutual friends, and she said 'You need to submit this film in our film festival,'” Hogan said.
“It's very rare for someone to come seek you out to put your film in their festival so that was pretty cool. I had to (enter it)!”
Hogan said the film was originally an hour but it was shortened to around 10 minutes before it was posted on-line. He said it was too short to be a feature and too long to be a short film so he decided to cut to the heart of the story.
“I cut out a lot of great performances in it, but I just made it all about the music,” he said.
Cornfed Film Fest co-organizer Sue Scott said there are already plans to hold a second film festival. It is scheduled to start April 12, 2013. She said committee members have already started talking about ideas to improve the event.
Submissions to the inaugural Cornfed Film Fest came from as far away as Manchester, United Kingdom. In addition to “Best of Fest,” five other awards were given:
Best Production Values/Cinematography in a Student Film
Aaron Sandage and Danny Morlock for Comatose
Best Picture in the Student Filmmakers Competition
Josh Cain and Warren Lamb for Freedom
Best Production Values/Cinematography in an Independent Film
George Zaverdas for David and Goliath
Best Picture in the Independent Filmmakers Competition
Erik Hogan for I Met Her in the Coffee Shop
Best Homegrown Film
Margaret Norwood for Wake