Pictured (from left): Brian Ramirez, director; Cade Bennett, star; Victor Diaz, producer, Jordan Chapin, actress; Jessie Parchman, actress, and Evan Sears, film scholar.
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Honors Northeast recently deposited $300 for its first-place tie with Jacksonville College for the annual Group Caldwell Award of Texas. This was the fourth time NTCC honors students have spearheaded a project involving original research in Texas History that has won top honors among all competing university and collegiate groups in the state.
The previous NTCC films to have obtained this honor included the 2015 film on Texas Governors--Ma and Pa Ferguson, the 2018 film on the Camp County opera singer, Barbara Conrad, and the 2019 film on Adina De Zavala and the making of the Alamo as a patriotic supersite.
The members of Honors Northeast, with considerable help from Texas composer, Kenny Goodson and Whatley Tech Director, Steven Nelms, premiered the winning film, Pedal to the Metal: The Story of Carroll Hall Shelby, last 25 March at the Whatley Center for the Performing Arts on the NTCC campus.
Recently a national committee of professors also accepted a panel proposal about the Shelby film, to be featured by members of Honors Northeast for the annual meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Council, this November in Dallas. NTCC scholars Jordan Chapin, Victor Diaz, Skylar Fondren, Evan Sears, and Dr. Andrew Yox will compose the panel.
Honors Director, Dr. Yox notes “we were thankful for some unique developments with the 2021 film. Stephen Borkowski’s singular contribution to NTCC of a Carroll Shelby Collection at our Charlie and Helen Hampton Library got us off to a very good start with the research. Student leaders such as Brian Ramirez and Victor Diaz combined both film experience with a great deal of alacrity in getting the filming finished, and edited. The two were willing to experiment, and they created our first film to employ green-screen techniques. Film scholar, Evan Sears pioneered a new view of Shelby as a ‘doer developer’ and as America’s foremost ‘emissary of the muscle car’. Cade Bennett came off his experience starring as Bo Pilgrim last year to master a dense, 80-page script as ‘Carroll Shelby’. Finally, Kenny Goodson not only scored the whole film, but reached a higher level of musical sophistication this year, conveying both the speed and passion of racing, and developing, a euphoric motif of triumph.”
Patrons of Honors Northeast supported the film effort. Foremost among them were Jerald and Mary Lou Mowery of Mount Vernon whose gifts have kept the NTCC film-making apparatus in business since 2014.
Trailers, full films, scripts, and stories of how NTCC honors students and members of the NTCC Webb Society made each of their ten feature-length films concerning Texas legends are found at www.ntcc.edu/honorsfilms. For questions about the films or about Honors Northeast, email ayox@ntcc.edu.
