I am constantly amazed by the creativity of Chapman University students – who would have thought that you could take a film, analyze its colors and use that to generate paintings?  Three students from the Computer Science department did and FilmStripes.com was born.  Akash Arora (Computer Science ’19), Donovan Tetsuka (Computer Science ’17), and William Cortes (Software Engineering ’17) have turned more than 200 Dodge College student films into beautiful poster images through an unique collaboration of science and art.

Akash elaborated on the project for us.

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A few friends and I just wrapped up our first website together this weekend – Film Stripes. We’ve been working on it for the past three months and we’re stoked to see so many students support it.

So, why did we make this snazzy website? Our About Page says “Film Stripes was created to give filmmakers a unique way to look at and analyze the color palette of their short films.” And that’s true, but we also really just wanted to give our fellow students a fun, artsy collage of their films. The aesthetics of the design were just as important to us as its utility. We spent as much time tweaking the user interface, as we did creating the functionality.

I think Film Stripes is great because it’s simple. No two paintings will ever be the same. They’re like fingerprints, which makes each one all the more special. As happy as I am to hear people talk about Film Stripes’ practical use, I hope everyone takes a step back to appreciate its simplicity.

Where did the idea come from? We got the concept from another site that was centered around monetizing their images as posters from mainstream films. We wanted to create something that would be free and more accessible to filmmakers – and most importantly, personal.

Pictured left to right – Akash Arora (Computer Science ’19), Donovan Tetsuka (Computer Science ’17), and William Cortes (Software Engineering ’17)