Film career path leads to national win for Bowen
This 2020 Farragut High School graduate discovered a love for filmmaking, which he plans to pursue as a career, then applied skills learned at the prestigious school and helped lead a team of teenage filmmakers from across the state to win a national competition.
At the Gov School June 1-22, 2019, “at Middle Tennessee State University, we were basically immersed in how to do filmmaking,” he said.
“I got a lot of really good experience, and that sort of locked me into ‘this is what I want to do as a career.’”
48-Hour competition
One year later, Bowen and several other Gov School filmmaking wannabes he had befriended got involved in a 48-Hour Global Film competition.
“When we found out this film competition was going on, we all wanted to get together and do it for fun, basically,” said Bowen, who will major in film production at MTSU starting this upcoming semester.
Naming itself “I’mmature Flix,” the group met at the home of group member Isabelle Leonard in Mt. Juliet June 5-7, “We did the filming there,” he said about the film “MAR-E 01,” which lasted “a little over seven minutes,” roughly the maximum time allowed.
Tough opener
In the opening round, MAR-E 01 won a “city” competition against a tough 12-team field as judged by a Nashville 48-Hour Global Film panel June 21.
“It was surreal when we won nationals by ourselves because there were a lot of professional teams in the Nashville area doing this competition,” said Bowen, co-director, co-editor and film operator. “There were some people, I believe, who are in the industry who do these competitions every year.”
Even compared to nationals, Bowen said winning the Nashville-area competition “was a little bit more rewarding in a way” because the 48-Hour Global Film panel chose their film as No. 1.
Going against “L.A.”
After winning against a “five city” field in the Southern Region, which following the “city” round became a social media voting competition, “We were put up against the West (Region champ), which was crazy because it was an L.A. film,” Bowen said. “We were like, ‘well, we might want to pack our bags.’
“But we still got a lot of people to vote — my parents were kind enough to spread it all over Facebook,” he added. “My friends in the competition basically did the same stuff.”
Though realizing the “L.A. film” was “professional level,” he and his group thought, “’We have a chance at this,’” Bowen recalled.
Upon beating the Los Angeles team, “It’s like, ‘Wow, we’re come really far. I guess we have a shot at winning nationals,’” he recalled saying.
Bowen and Company beat the East champ, “I think it was Connecticut,” and claimed the national championship in early July. “We found out on a live stream.
“I started tearing up,” Bowen added about his reaction.
“It was crazy.”
Making MAR-E 01
With competition sponsor 48-Hour Film Project supplying each competing filmmaking group the “genre (which was SciFi), prop, character and line to be included; you have to figure out the rest and get it submitted within 48 hours,” Bowen said.
To ensure spontaneity, “We were given all that information at 7 (a.m.) on June 5, so we couldn’t come up with a story before that time,” he said.
MAR-E 01 combined SciFi “into a coming-of-age story,” he said. The story centers on a young woman, Birdie, who is dealing with an internal divide she has with other people. She ends up building a robot sheep as a companion.
“We started exporting the film about 20 minutes before deadline,” Bowen added. “We didn’t actually watch the film” before sending.
World competition
Advancing to a 16-film world competition last month, MAR-E 01 was in a first-round foursome with films from France, Slovakia and Columbia. However, Bowen’s film “didn’t make it past that first round,” he said.
“But I’m still happy.”
