College Times

Issue date: 7/2/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Ryan Ruiz

Many college students finish their degrees in four years, but for film studies graduate Jared Mercier, it took six years and he accomplished more than most students could imagine.

Before Arizona State University developed its new film school there was not a major that put all film students together. The business school gave producers their degrees and creative writing gave screenplay writers theirs.

During Mercier's six years at ASU he started his own film club when the existing one refused to permit him to make a short "Lord of the Rings" parody. He was the president of the ASU Film Association for many years and turned it into a networking club where aspiring actors, directors, producers and writers could come together and possibly even work on short movies together.

For five years Mercier has been working on a full-length feature movie titled "Madison Hall," and has finally completed it a year after graduating from ASU.

College Times: When did you start working on "Madison Hall"?
Jared Mercier: It's based on actual events that happened to me freshman year in the dorms. I started writing the script in 2004 for a screenwriting class and I thought, 'Well this is easy, I already have the story.' During the summer of '05 I started saying, 'Okay, I'm really going to work on this script.' I thought, 'Well I can do this movie for my Capstone project,' which is like your senior thesis. We did almost 10 months of pre-production and started shooting in '06. We wrapped principle photography in December of '06 and then did a year and a half of post-production. We locked the picture on April 9th and it was the first time we thought, 'Okay we are done, this is the movie.'

Briefly describe the plot of the movie.
The national terror alert has just risen from yellow to orange and fear and panic are spreading quickly, but not for the students at Granada State University. A new 24-hour quiet policy has just taken affect at Madison Hall. For residential assistant Melanie it's a relief, but for the residents it's non-existent. Two fights, a kidnapping, a break-in in the tunnel system and a bomb threat send the campus police for a wild ride as they search for a terrorist responsible for the acts committed by 14 dumb college students, all whom conveniently enough live in Madison Hall. The story structure in and of itself is kind of like that of "Can't Hardly Wait" or "American Graffiti."

Continued...

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