Since the days of Charlie Chaplin, America has been fascinated by films. For one Buford High School graduate, his love for making films became his career choice and has led him to enter one of his short films into the Sugar Hill Film Festival.
Andrew Fricks fell in love with filmmaking in middle school when he and his friend Hugh Entrekin would make short films, mostly comedy sketches for YouTube. However, it wasn’t until high school when he had to make video projects for Spanish class that he started considering it as a possible career. After graduation, Andrew decided to make filmmaking his career choice. He majored in film with an emphasis in film production at the University of North Georgia.
It was a professor at UNG who introduced him to the Sugar Hill Film Festival, also known as the Broad Street Film Festival. The festival consists of a two-day event held at the Eagle Theatre in downtown Sugar Hill. The festival features projects from feature films of 90 minutes to short films that are 30 minutes to five-minute music videos. The film creators range from high school and college students to professional filmmakers.
For Andrew, this is his second year with a project in the festival. His submission this year is a short film.
“This short film is called ‘Slow.’ It’s a 20-minute pilot episode seeking distribution as a potential series,” Andrew said. “It’s about two brothers that are doing their best to get by, but the older brother (Hugh) is keeping a secret that could put them both in danger as we find out a bounty hunter is chasing them.”
The script for “Slow” was written while Andrew was still in college at UNG. With a limited budget in mind, he decided to give priority to the casting of the film. Creative planning to limit the number of days they spent shooting the film also helped stretch their budget.
While Andrew would love to win an award at the festival, the main reasons he entered the film festival are to gain exposure for the short film and to build his reputation as a filmmaker. His portfolio of work consists of several short films, commercials and other documentary type projects for various clients. His main love remains producing films like that of “Slow.”
“Slow” is due to air in the afternoon block of films Saturday, Feb. 27, at the Broad Street Film Festival. The film awards will be presented at 7 p.m. that night. To purchase tickets to the festival, visit broadstreetfilmfest.com/buy-ticketss/.
— Alicia Couch Payne
