New York Film Academy (NYFA) MFA in Producing student Aliza Jafri and 1-Year Producing student Jon Legarda won big at this year’s Los Angeles Live Score Film Festival, coming away with both Best Film and Best Composer. The two students teamed up to produce documentary short A Deep Breath, which focuses on freediving as a place of solace from stress and the emotions tied into being far from home.
The Los Angeles Live Score Film Festival is in its sixth year and featured selected works from local film schools that were paired with professional composers to create original scores. The films were screened on July 22 at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, with their new scores performed live by renowned performance and recording ensemble Helix Collective.
The film was curated for the festival by Crickett Rumley, Director of the NYFA Los Angeles Film Festival Department, after a rigorous school-wide competition. “When I first heard about Jon and Aliza’s project, I thought it was incredibly ambitious and wondered how they could possibly meet the deadline,” says Rumley.
She adds, “Then I saw the rough cut and knew immediately it would be a festival hit. The freediving is so peaceful and beautiful, and the interviews with Jon and his mother are incredibly charming. I look forward to seeing where the film goes next.”
Jafri and Legarda’s hard work paid off: “It was an amazing feeling because all the late nights staying up editing and trying to push this movie out by the deadline of this festival were really hard,” says the filmmaker. “It gave us a chance to collaborate with a composer and see how that whole process works from beginning to end. It was an amazing experience to see how Cali Wang, the composer, brought life to our film with the score she composed.”
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