Q&A with Campus MovieFest's Dan Costa

What happens when college students get the latest in basic filming equipment and one week to make a movie?

See for yourself Sunday, March 6, in the . At 7:30 p.m., Georgia Tech students will screen their submissions to Campus MovieFest, an international student film competition started in 2000 by four Emory University students.

Georgia Tech is the latest local school to host a screening -- Emory, Georgia State, University of Georgia and The Art Institute of Atlanta also participated this year. (Read more about The Art Institute of Atlanta student participation .)

What sets Campus MovieFest (CMF) apart from similar programs, such as Kino or the 48 Hour Film Festival, is its focus on new technology and sponsorship from big-name brands.

Co-founder Dan Costa now lives with his wife by the Midtown Art Cinema. But three years ago, CMF operated out of his shared two-bedroom apartment in Virginia-Highland. Now the company has 24 employees in a spacious converted warehouse off College Avenue in Decatur, near the Avondale MARTA stop, with piles of cool gadgets, wide-screen computers and a friendly Samoyed dog named Gabe.

Costa recently answered questions about CMF's beginnings, how it evolved in the past decade and why driving the speed limit on I-285 made for a memorable film.

How did three business majors and a biology major decide to start a film competition?

That's the funny thing. Campus MovieFest wasn't launched because of our love for film. We weren't down that path, originally. At the start, it was all about the technology. At the time, no one could make a movie without having a tremendous amount of knowledge, editing knowledge and production knowledge. Apple had just come out with iMovie, so it was the first time where you could make a movie without needing to know any of this stuff. We thought it was a great opportunity to share with others.

That combined with the fact that at Emory, we didn't have a football team and there wasn't a tremendous amount of events that the school could rally around and have a lot of spirit around. So we said, well, what if we tried to do something where it was a little bit of a competition?

There's obviously a lot of business savvy behind Campus MovieFest.

I don't know how smart at business you are if you're running a student film festival. (Laughs.) The challenge was obviously taking it from a student-run, fun  event to "Well, how can we, like, pay rent and live?" I think our business background has helped in the sense of reaching out to partners and keeping the festival as authentic as possible, but at the same time really getting companies and brands that believe in what we're doing and believe in being associated with it.

Is the festival more popular at schools with or without film programs?

Early on, Campus MovieFest was truly probably 95 percent for people who'd never done this before. You got to keep in mind that when we started this event, there was no YouTube. People weren't putting movies up online. We pretty much begged our Information Technology Division at Emory to let us stream our movies off of their server. Now, as we've grown and we've brought the event to a lot more film-savvy colleges and universities, it's actually been an amazing blend of "this is open to anyone" and reaching out to some of the top student filmmakers in the nation.

College students now are more likely to have access to equipment and broadcasting outlets, so how do you evolve with that?

We've pushed ourselves to go one step further, which is, "OK, what's next? What should we be helping drive?" And that's 3D. We've got 20 Panasonic 3D cameras going out that aren't released yet, that aren't for sale.

What drew the CMF headquarters to Decatur?

I think it has that same sort of vibe that works for us -- we're hardworking but at the same time we have a laid back attitude. The area is cool. We like it.

Where's the best place to film in Atlanta?

As you're coming down Freedom Parkway, a lot of people stand on Jackson Street. It's just a great spot that overlooks the entire city. If you saw it in anything, you'd totally recognize it, but no one really knows where it is exactly. Piedmont Park is great because you've got the park and the beautiful lake there, but then you've got the city in the background. We're also seeing a lot of people use the new Beltline.

Any favorites films over the years?

I typically don't tell people what they are. (Laughs.) There are some CMF classics, though. There's a movie that came out from GSU a few years ago called 55. It was basically these students who thought that the speed limit on 285 around the Perimeter was silly because it's 55 but everyone drives 75. They got (five drivers) in line, got them driving 55, and then two of the cars called news stations and said, "Some idiots are on 285 driving 55 miles an hour."

They were on Diane Sawyer and they were on almost every news channel there is, and it spawned this huge national debate. It was pretty awesome, and it all came from just one of the students saying, "I hate that I have to drive 55 on 285 'cause this is ridiculous." We've stood by the idea that everybody's got these stories to tell, and we want to be able to give them the opportunity to do that.

How can Georgia improve its incentive program for film and television production?

You are starting to see more productions come out of Atlanta, which is great -- "Hall Pass," with Jason Sudeikis, "Zombieland" -- but there's a long way to go. We've had people that have been part of Campus MovieFest who worked on "Zombieland." That's part of our goal, to be a launchpad for students. It's a tricky one, though.

Why so tricky?

From a student perspective, for better or for worse, they have L.A. on their mind. They want to get out there and try it. The tricky piece is connecting them with stuff that's going on in and around Georgia and giving them enough of an opportunity not to have to go west. We think Atlanta should be on the map and can be on the map for a lot of this stuff.

How do you recognize real potential in a filmmaker?

Y0u know, it's a good question. The answer to that is what we're integrating into our top prizes this year. With AT&T as our presenting partner, their slogan right now is "Rethink Possible," so we kind of took that idea and tried to pass it on to the students (as a prize category). We're picking not just the top films, but we're also digging in deeper. From our perspective, it really comes down to passion. You have to want it. It sounds simple, but it's only simple on paper. It's the hardest thing to do.