Youth Making Ripples Competition Goes International

The Beneath the Waves film festival at Florida Tech begins tonight! This is a short trailer that shows some of the awesome films we will premiere at our festival. The past few weeks have been very busy as we prepare for the event. We recently had an interview with WFIT, Florida Tech’s NPR radio station, which will be featured on Oct. 8’s “Inside Florida Tech” program. The press surrounding the event has really paid off because we now have over 250 people that have reserved seats for both nights. It is turning into a huge event and, hopefully, it will become an annual event here at Florida Tech.

As I have mentioned before, we are launching The Youth Making Ripples film competition for K-12 students in conjunction with the film festival. This past week we had a request from an international conservation group based in the Netherlands. The group runs a similar youth film competition for Europe. They asked us if we wanted to collaborate and share the winning films from our youth competition. When we started Youth Making Ripples, we thought it would more of a local event, but it has gained popularity and international exposure in only two months. We are excited to see what the students create! The Youth Making Ripples competition will debut January 18 from 6-8 p.m. in the Gleason Performing Arts Center on Florida Tech’s main campus.  Many local schools have already informed us that they are planning to submit films from students working in small groups or as a class.  The guidelines for the competition are simple. Students have to make a film that is less than five minutes in length on a marine science topic of their interest. Submissions are due by December 1, 2013. Submission details can be found here.