WITH a steady arm, a Samsung Galaxy S3 and self-taught editing skills, amateur movie-maker Hodeano Dixon produced a three-minute movie and copped the top prize in Digicel’s Mobile Movie category of the Jamaica Film Festival awards.

The 19-year-old from Spanish Town, wrote, produced, directed and played a lead role in the movie called Delivery, a tongue-in-cheek suspense flick set in his hometown.

“This competition has really motivated me to pursue a career in film-making,” Dixon said. “I heard about the competition from a friend of mine and I decided to just take a chance and enter. “I’ve always been making dance videos with my friends, and playing around with editing and trying new things, but this competition pushed me to take it to another level and I really enjoyed it. I think I have talent but I’d love to work on developing that and building something out of it,” he continued.

Dixon said the competition has inspired him to now pursue studies in film-making or to seek employment with a production company to start garnering some experience in the field.

Kimala Bennett, managing director of the Production Lab, who sat on the panel of judges, explained why Dixon’s entry won.

“We selected Delivery as the overall winner because it was leading in all three areas of story development, overall production and best picture. Its quality was impressive but more importantly, the story had us anticipating the outcome from the start and the flow and structure was very strategically built,” she said.

Director of Marketing at Digicel, Peter Lloyd, was also impressed.

“It’s amazing to see the quality of work that this young man managed to pull off with a smartphone. It was a great story, fun to watch and very creatively done,” he said.

“As a Jamaican company and one that is evolving into a full-service telecommunications and entertainment provider, we rely very heavily on the creative industry. As such, we’re very happy to support any initiative that is focused on the development of that area and we commend JAMPRO on this first staging of the Jamaica Film Festival. Jamaica is home to huge talent and we want to help ensure that Jamaica continues to be the creative hope of the Caribbean,” Lloyd added.

The week-long annual event culminated in an awards show held at the Courtleigh Auditorium on Saturday, July 11.