While nearly 20,000 students prepared for final exams at the end of last fall, 100 of them were also channeling their creative side by writing, acting, filming and editing their entry for Campus MovieFest 2012. The result? A few students and their films will travel to Los Angeles and the Cannes Film Festival this summer.

Georgia Tech had 21 teams enter this year’s national competition, earning nominations for various awards in the overall competition, as well as Best Drama, Best Comedy, and Best Picture among the national submissions. The three winners are announced at a red carpet showcase at each campus, and are flown to Los Angeles – with a potential Wild Card winner – to attend Campus MovieFest Hollywood in the summer, where the overall winners are shown and announced.

Cody Turner, a second-year computational media major, always had an interest in film and was skilled in editing, but never had much experience acting. Cody held the lead male role in his team’s film, “Take Care,” which won Best Drama for Georgia Tech.

“I was the only one [on our team] who had any real experience working on movies, and it meant nothing,” Turner said. “We created something that we were proud of simply because we worked hard at it.” Turner advised future groups to build a big team, be organized and care about the movie.

“Winning was unbelievable. Walking down to the stage and realizing that now what we made was going to be screened in Hollywood in front of dozens of actors, directors and producers was overwhelming.”

The Wild Card winner is determined by online viewer votes. Each participating campus has the opportunity to nominate a film not in its top three based on the number of YouTube views it receives, and the most popular films nationwide compete in a judged Wild Card bracket for a spot in Los Angeles.

The world’s largest student film and musical festival, Campus MovieFest was founded by four students at Emory University in 2001. Today, Campus MovieFest engages more than 500,000 college students around the globe, providing participants with laptops, camcorders, training and a week to create a five-minute film at no cost.

Past movies are available on campusmoviefest.com, and are also shown on Virgin America flights, on mobile phones, and at the Short Film Corner at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Campus MovieFest Hollywood will be June 21-23, where Georgia Tech’s top films will be up for awards.