This week’s Her Campus Celebrity has truly shown where focusing your talents can take you. Washington D.C. native, Film and Media Studies senior Alex Zeldin created a series for Oxy’s television network, Catalyst in the fall of 2010 that he described was “love it or hate it” in terms of viewer response. The series “Antolini Brothers” was one of Zeldin’s first major projects in college and working on it and working for Catalyst taught him the finer points of film production, particularly how to produce work on a regular basis and provide good, creative content under a time crunch. “After showing them to a Hollywood producer I met at a film festival, he urged me to ‘step up my game’ and aim bigger, both in terms of production value and marketability,” recalled Zeldin. “Thus we ended the Antolini Brothers and formed ChiliFlakes Comedy.”
ChiliFlakes Comedy is a production group made up of four Oxy students, for which Alex serves as writer and editor. They produce high-quality sketch comedy videos which have been shown, with good ratings and high viewer numbers, on the notable comedy website, “Funny or Die”. Two of the videos, “Bing” and “The Funeral,” have been featured on the front page of the website. “Bing” has also gone on to win Best Picture at the 2011 Clifton Film Festival. Additionally, the ChiliFlakes videos are now being shown as part of Catalyst’s programming for the year and are getting good reception on campus. “Seeing the work on Catalyst is real pleasure,” says Zeldin. “It’s wonderful when both my friends and total strangers tell me how much they enjoyed a particular video.”
The success of the ChiliFlakes sketches has had much to do with Zeldin and his team’s time at Oxy. First, this is where the four met and the pasta station’s chili flakes were what inspired the name. Catalyst has been a place where Zeldin has been able to grow as a filmmaker and show his voice on campus, though he also does so on the Occidental Weekly, as an Op-Ed writer. Alex has also been on O-Team and involved in intramural sports.
As for plans after college, Zeldin hopes to continue being involved in film. “After college I hope to land a job as an assistant in the film industry and continue to write screenplays and produce web videos in my spare time. My ultimate goal is to be a screenwriter.” If his videos so far reflect anything, he’ll be sure to go on and make a name for himself.