mtvU, MTV's 24-hour college network, has selected an NYU student film, Rock, Paper, Scissors, winner of its inaugural "Best Animation on Campus Contest." Gary Finkler and Joseph Rosenberg, students in the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, co-created the film, and John Boyd, a masters student in the university's Music and Performing Arts Professions Department, wrote its music score.
The prize includes an MTV animation development deal and an airing of the film on mtvU.
The short film was the result of an assignment in Finkler and Rosenberg's animation class. Assigned to make an animation portraying anger, Rosenberg recalled from an NYU anthropology class that the game "rock, paper, scissors" may convey an urge for violence.
"Here was this game that we played as preschoolers which really represents the darkest side of human nature?!" Finkler told mtvU. "We decided to take this idea to the next level."
The film was chosen by 160,000 online votes from mtvU viewers as well as Seth MacFarlane, creator of The Family Guy, Pixar's Bud Luckey, animator on the Toy Story movies, and Paul Dini, producer and writer of Batman: The Animated Series.
mtvU broadcasts in 720 colleges across the country, with a combined enrollment of 6 million.
Rock, Paper, Scissors was also shown this spring by the Film Society at Lincoln Center. The event, "Toons, Tunes and Trikfilms," featured 14 silent films created by students at the Tisch School of the Arts. The films were accompanied by a live ensemble of student and faculty musicians from NYU's Film Scoring Program, part of the Steinhardt School of Education's Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions.
