One graduating senior with a camera, 10 groups of college students and dozens of experiences captured to portray the ultimate college Friday night.
On April 10, filmmaker Shyam Madhav stopped in Eugene on his tour across the country to share his film, “Goodnight College.” The University Film Organization screened the film in Allen Hall, followed by a short Q&A with its creator.
The film is an ode to the unpredictability of young adulthood and how friendships formed in school create some of the best memories. Shot over the course of various weekend nights during his senior year spring semester, Madhav shared a glimpse into his life as a student at University of Texas at Austin for his capstone project. Now, he’s bringing it to campuses far from home.
“Goodnight College” is a feature-length film that follows the course of an entire night from sunrise to sunset, but it is actually a compilation from several Fridays edited together. Madhav filmed over the course of his final semester, saying he used the time to follow “a bunch of different, unique pockets of student life that tries to capture the whole experience of what (he) found special about college.”
He follows a wide array of characters, including a group of senior friends, the UT Austin men’s ice hockey team, a radio DJ and an improv troupe. Some of the subjects were Madhav’s personal friends, but others were the result of cold calls and sheer luck. “I basically just filmed friends and just like reached out to different organizations to make something that created a time capsule, like all the sort of sporadic moments that you kind of only find at this time of your life,” he said.
Sharing different perspectives of what a typical Friday night might look like was essential. The cuts between the improv troupe’s lighthearted performance were juxtaposed with shots from a violent ice hockey game. The large co-op party transitioned into a scene of the four senior friends grabbing a bite from a food truck. None of it feels out of place, rather, a reflection of how college looks different for everyone.
The film is shot documentary style, and luckily, following around non-actors wasn’t a challenge. Madhav said that funny or heartwarming scenes manifested naturally. Although there wasn’t as much narrative control as there would be for a scripted piece, things seemed to fall into place.
He was the only crew member, except when he was intermittently joined by a friend to record sound. This seemed to be an effective approach, as the subjects seldom acknowledge the camera. Whenever they do, the camera becomes somewhat of a character, placing the viewer right in the story like they were another peer.
There were a few bumps in the road, a standout being a moment toward the end when the seniors get kicked out of a pool by a security guard for filming and drinking, but Madhav recognized it as extra “added stakes to it in a funny, short way.”
When he graduated with a finished film under his belt, Madhav posted “Goodnight College” to YouTube and submitted it to several film festivals. But it felt like something was missing. For the next two years, he shaped it into something he would be proud to share on campuses across the country.
“I knew that I made it for people who could connect with that college experience,” he said. “It’s been a blast being able to meet all the people, and then laugh and talk about it after.”
University Film Organization’s President Charliee Hines believes that screening this film was a unique and necessary opportunity to share a different perspective with student filmmakers. To Hines’ recollection, this is the first time that the organization has ever screened a non-UO student filmmaker’s project. Hosting this type of event was new, but it was the perfect way to teach students that filmmaking is not a constricted art form, genre or style-wise.
“I feel like, considering that a lot of our guest speakers are narrative, having someone who was a student who did a documentary and won best feature for it is definitely an inspiring thing,” Hines said. “I feel like students will take that as like, okay, ‘I don’t have to go the narrative route,’ but they can do something that they love.”
“Goodnight College” isn’t representative of each and every unique student’s college experience, but some things are just universal: an elaborate handshake created as freshmen that is muscle memory by senior year, or meeting an eccentric stranger at the corner store. Sometimes the little moments are the most precious.
“Get ready at least to say goodbye to this time of your life and sort of have closure,” Madhav said about how seniors should approach the coming weeks. “I look back with a little bit of fondness and maybe that helps me sort of be able to appreciate it as a whole thing, you know?”
The University Film Organization will be hosting its tenth annual student film festival on May 29, and “Goodnight College” is free to watch on Youtube.
