NYU Senior Reflects On Winning Coca-Cola Award

by Mark Rabinowitz

Kyle Newman, a 21-year-old senior at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts is the recipient of the first "Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker's Award" which includes $10,000. In addition, his winning 60-second film will be screened before features at approximately 10,000 theater across the country, beginning April 24th. indieWIRE spoke with Newman on Friday, and he told us how he came to the project, and some of the hurdles he needed to overcome to complete the film on deadline.

Last fall, Coca-Cola announced the contest at five of the "leading film schools in the country," New York University (NYU); University of Southern California; University of California, Los Angeles, North Carolina School of the Arts, and Columbia University. Newman, for his part says he "stumbled upon it." He was on his way to class when he heard that someone was going to speak about the contest ,"So I kind of skipped out of going to class and went to listen....It looked like a very good opportunity (but) I didn't realize how large of an opportunity it actually would be."

At the meeting he learned that the first round of the contest required original scripts and storyboards for a 60-second-long film about the movies or the movie going experience. In December the original 150 or so entries were whittled down to ten finalists who were given $5,000 and a choice: Use the $5,000 to complete the film in approximately six weeks, thereby taking a shot at winning the grand prize, or take the money and run, so's to speak. Not surprisingly, Kyle, as well as the other nine finalists decided to make their film.

"Bitten By Love," the minute-long film Newman finished is a tale of a man and his dog who both find love at the movies, and once he was named a finalist he was off and running to finish the project in the time allotted. Newman had to "shoot it, edit it, score it, sound design it...final everything" in just under six weeks over Christmas break and New Year's. "Everyone was on break that month," Newman remarked, adding "they also assigned it right during finals, so the availability of human resources was very minimal." The director, however, took that as a challenge, "I think that actually works to your advantage. The bigger the obstacle that you have to conquer, the bigger success you can have if you pull it off." The contests rules were rigid, with the length of the piece to be 60 seconds, not one second more or less. "I was trimming frames up until the last day, making it right."

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Forcing filmmakers to tell a complete story in such a short period of time may seem a bit cruel, but often not to the filmmakers themselves. Newman relished the limitations placed on him, saying "I think it's a phenomenal way to learn. (It's) a great way to refine your skills," adding, "It gives you a little better understanding when you're doing a feature to know when things can breath and also gives you great skill at keeping things moving when they have to move." The trip to ShoWest recently to accept the prize was a gas, to say the least for the young filmmaker. In addition to awards given to Matt Damon, Minnie Driver and several other industry notables, the closing night's award ceremony included Newman getting an award for his short and a screening of the film in front of 3,500 people. Suitably impressed with the well wishers (Barry Levinson and Matt Damon, among others), Newman intends on keeping a level head, saying, "A lot of big names came up to me afterward and congratulated me, and they really liked it," adding, "That was there, that day and I'm obviously not go be with all of these people next week, so I've got to look at building towards my career and not getting lost in the b.s. of it all." RELATED ARTICLES @ indieWIRE.com: (December 8, 1998) Coke Corrects Filmmaking Finalists (December 5, 1998) Coke Is It for Ten Filmmaking Finalists Login to recommend this article » posted on April 6, 1998 Films to Snag Login to Leave a Comment »