As of this semester, Calvin’s arts and writing journal, Dialogue, will be including a new category for submissions: film.
Former editor-in-chief Jack van Allsburg first planted the idea of including films in Dialogue last year.
“Jack mentioned something in passing saying that it would be cool to have a film category,” said current editor-in-chief Jeffrey Peterson. “At the end of last year, I became a film major and Hailey [Jansson], our layout editor, is also a film major, so I thought, what better year to do the new category?”
Innovation is not uncommon for Dialogue. Last year, the publication added a new music category, accepting submissions from students that ended up in an online playlist. This new online aspect was another reason Dialogue wanted to add the film category.
“[Music] has been kind of an odd case because with poetry and prose and visual art and photography, it’s all in the physical copy. Music is almost like a separate entity because it’s only online — we don’t have really anything printed in the physical copy except for the playlist. We don’t have lyrics, we don’t have a physical copy of a CD, it’s just kind of … online,” said managing editor Taylor Hartson. “Another thing that film would bring is another dimension to an online presence. It kind of beefs up the music category a little bit and gives it a little more significance.”
“[Music is] no longer the oddball,” echoed Peterson. The addition of film is “taking another step towards adding a new dimension. A really big thing we’re trying to do this year is make Dialogue more than just a physical copy.”
Though excited about the possibilities, Peterson does not want to be in competition with the communication arts and sciences [CAS] department: “We want to make sure we’re not stepping on the toes of the media showcase,” he said. “One way we expect to be different is that, the media showcase just selects a few works from classes in a given year. We want to open the door to people who are not just in CAS classes or people who missed opportunities to get in the media showcase.”
Peterson expects there might be some overlap, but he believes Dialogue will be able to draw from a broader source, specifically upperclassmen who are working on things outside of class and “don’t really have a venue where it can be shared at Calvin.”
If the film category is a success, Peterson hopes it will encourage people to push boundaries: “In the production classes you don’t push the boundaries very much, which is what I would love to see in Dialogue. I think it’s a possibility that we might already get some of that, but not necessarily something we can bank on while we’re still trying to raise awareness for the category.”
Due to the fact that film is not something that can happen last minute, Peterson is unsure of the amount of submissions Dialogue will receive. “It’s not something you can crank out the day before,” he said. “It’s hard to tell, too, because we get so many submissions flooding in at the deadline. What we get in early is not an indication of what we have at the end.”
“We want to try as hard as we can to put the film category out there and publish something with film this semester, but if we only get two or three submissions that’s going to be really hard,” Hartson said.
“I don’t expect it to take off right away,” said Peterson, “but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to do something with it this semester.”
Peterson encourages film submissions of all kinds. To submit to Dialogue, visit their home page and click submit. Film submissions must be under 15 minutes in duration. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 14.
