An ex-con desperately trying to rescue his kidnapped fiancée and daughter, a wild goose chase of crime led by a crazy heroin-addict seeking retribution, and two homicide inspectors hot on the trail of a murder. A world of crime, passion and revenge. A world created by broadcasting student Davin Affrunti in his award-winning feature film script, "Full Circle."

Affrunti is the winner of two national awards from the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) -- Best of Festival/King Foundation Award and first place in the student scriptwriting competition. This is the second consecutive year that an SFSU student has received these prestigious honors.

"Full Circle" is a crime drama written by Affrunti as an assignment for a Dramatic Writing class. Affrunti, who names Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann as influences, finds it easy to write crime dramas, even though he only had three months to write the script. Affrunti says it usually takes up to a year for writers to come up with a good screenplay.

"If I'm going to say that any movie made me want to write a crime drama, it's definitely 'Heat,'" says Affrunti, referring to a 1995 crime saga by producer and director Mann.

"Davin has a lot of talent and the energy to work it," says Corless Smith, Affrunti's adviser and a professor in the Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts Department. "I expect to see his name rolling in the credits very soon."

For Affrunti, one of the biggest challenges of writing a crime drama is portraying crime and legal procedures accurately. As part of research for the script, he read books on criminology and criminal justice, discussed terminology and reviewed scenes with a homicide inspector. Affrunti also observed mannerisms and reactions of police officers on the street and placed himself in the mindset of "a nervous criminal on the lookout."

During winter break, Affrunti spent two and half days on the computer finishing his script while visiting his family in Los Angeles.

"I didn't think I made the deadline so when I found out that I won, not in one category but two, I didn't know what to do. We celebrated for a few days," Affrunti says.

Affrunti and fellow student Sean Warner are in the process of producing "Full Circle" and hope to have the film picked up by a production company at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Warner produced "Twitch," a short film that won second place at this year's Slamdance Film Festival.

For first place in the feature film category of the scriptwriting competition, Affrunti received scriptwriting software Final Draft 7 and a book from Michael Weise Productions. For the Best of Festival/King Foundation Award, Affrunti will receive $1,000 and Avid software at the 2005 BEA Festival of Media Arts award ceremony April 23 in Las Vegas.

Every year since 2002, SFSU students have placed in the top three of the festival’s scriptwriting competition. Last year, Professor Emeritus Herbert Zettl was awarded the Distinguished Education Service Award. Zettl is well-known in the academic and professional field as a pioneer in media aesthetics.

The Broadcast Education Association is a worldwide organization of professors and industry professionals who teach broadcasting and electronic media to college students.

-- Student Writer Audrey Tang with Matt Itelson
Photo: Kevin Bass