Editor's note: This is the second of four student profiles who have submitted films for the Penn State student Film Festival, which will take place at 6 p.m. Saturday at the State Theatre. Tickets are $7.

Tim Frisch is a student filmmaker with high expectations; however, he has some difficulty when describing his upcoming film, Alex's Last Day, which he submitted to this weekend's student film festival.

"...It's about a girl who's pushed to the end of her rope and a neighbor who doesn't care," Frisch (senior-film) said.

Frisch decided he wanted to be a filmmaker when he was in high school and it was time for him to start looking for colleges. Although he was not involved with filmmaking in high school, he was always involved with acting and liked movies.

Frisch wrote and directed his 12-minute short film and calls it a dark comedy. The whole process of shooting the film took him 11 days and about 30 hours to edit. Frisch said a quality that separates his film from most of the others is that it was shot on film instead of video.

"Film looks better and it gives you more options if you know what you're doing. The down side is that it's much more expensive," Frisch said. It is also a much more rigorous process. The filmmaker has to send it off to get printed, then, manually edit it when the reels return.

Although this is Frisch's first film with a significant budget and larger crew, he is no stranger to making short films. Last year he shot an 11-minute movie for his junior final film entitled Got a Light?, but this time he had the benefit of a larger cast. He had anywhere from 12 to 14 fellow film students' help with the process. He was also able to fund the movie through a combination of private fundraising and film scholarship grants he received through the university.

Frisch shot the film in two locations -- for the exterior shots he used a neighborhood on Hamilton Avenue and for the interior shots he used an apartment on Beaver Avenue. The film itself only has two people in the cast.

Frisch said filmmakers and films that are well-written influence him. He cited Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson as influences.

After graduating in a few weeks, Frisch said he will pursue filmmaking ambitions as he will head toward New York City, Boston or California hoping to make it in the film business. "I'm going to submit this film to as many festivals as I can ... try and find a job," Frisch said.