Cal State L.A. grad student takes home top prize
Music video, short screenplay both recognized at CSU Media Arts Festival
Los Angeles, CA — Out of 164 entries from 15 campuses, two Cal State L.A. students were honored at the 22nd Annual California State University (CSU) Media Arts Festival (MAF) awards competition, which was recently held at Cal State Fullerton.
Erik Boccio, who is working toward his Master of Fine Arts in Television, Film and Theatre (TVFT) at CSULA, nabbed a $500 Rosebud Award for his music video of Red Letter Day’s “Northern Lights.” Boccio describes “Northern Lights” as “an artist’s journey that takes him from the desert to Hollywood and into the ocean; realizing you can only go so far before you’re back where you started.” The video was one of many film projects that Boccio directed for a class taught by Alan Bloom, professor of film and television at CSULA.
“It was a tremendous honor to be recognized as a director and artist alike,” said Boccio, a Toluca Lake resident who was raised in New York. “This award will certainly enhance my portfolio. My ultimate career goal is to direct for television and film, and teach at the university level.”
This past summer, Boccio directed the stage production of Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit at CSULA. He was also a winner of “Best Music Video” at the Golden Eagle Film Festival 2012. He is currently working as a lab instructor for television production in the University’s Department of TV, Film and Media Studies. Boccio received his bachelor’s degree in media studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
“Boccio is a very hardworking student and a serious filmmaker, whose work is exceedingly refreshing, beautifully shot and impressively edited,” said Professor Bloom. “The award confirms the quality of the work of our students. The festival is certainly a premier event to showcase our TVFT graduate program, which is in its fifth year.”
Additionally, CSULA student Evan Manning received second-place honor for his short screenplay, “The Ghost of Fairmount Heights,” about a fourth grader’s encounter with a ghost of a teenage boy in a neighborhood alleyway.
“It’s great to have my work recognized this way. In a way, I feel as if it’s an indication of the growth that I’ve experienced in the CSULA program,” said Manning, a TVFT graduate student with a focus on dramatic writing. “I want to eventually make a living writing for television and/or film. I’ve been both a big lover of movies and television ever since I can remember.”
Manning—who currently lives in Monterey Park but is originally from Bowie, MD—wrote the screenplay for his “Creating Characters and Writing Dialogue” class in winter 2010, which was taught by CSULA Professor Kristiina Hackel. He completed his undergraduate work at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD, where he majored in telecommunications with a concentration in television production.
The Media Arts Festival offers talented film, video and interactive media students from the 23-campus CSU system an opportunity to present their work for critical review and recognition.
A panel of distinguished CSU faculty and industry professionals selected 37 outstanding pieces representing 10 CSU campuses. The categories the students competed in were: animation; documentary; experimental; interactive; music video; narrative; television; feature screenplay; and short screenplay.
Cash prizes during the award ceremony included $500 and a Rosebud Award to the winner of Best in Show, $500 and a Rosebud Award to the winner in each category, and $250 to the campus department of each winning category. Place awards were also given in each category.
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Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 225,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six Colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to the Honors College for high-achieving students. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu