April 15, 2025
For this article of Backstage at the Egyptian, our Marketing Intern, Lia Martinez, interviews Sergio Acosta, the Director of Marketing for the Reality Bytes Film Festival. This free event will be hosted at the Egyptian Theatre on Wednesday, April 16th at 7:00 PM and requires no ticket to attend! Continue reading to learn more about Sergio’s passion for film and business, how each film is impactful to the audience, and the work and effort put into each film as well as the event itself by NIU students and staff make this event special and strengthens our community here in DeKalb.
Lia: Could you share a bit about yourself?
Sergio: I’m Sergio Acosta. I am currently double majoring in Business Administration and Marketing with a minor in Communications at NIU. Some of the hobbies that I enjoy the most are reading, whether it is fiction or nonfiction. I also enjoy listening to music; it helps motivate me and helps me organize my ideas. I also like to play and watch soccer; I love to play in my free time with my friends or even by myself. On the other hand, I like to watch my favorite teams when they have an important game.
But above all, my favorite hobby or passion is film. Every summer, when I have a little more time, I like to go back and watch my favorite films, but I also select any film that I forgot about during the school year, and I usually watch them throughout the summer.
Although I like to watch the best films and learn from them, when it comes to shows, they are my guilty pleasure. Once in a while, I watch a telenovela here and there, and some of my favorite shows are SWAT, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, What We Do in the Shadows, and many others that are really entertaining, and I have a lot of fun watching them
L: What made you interested in the Reality Bytes Film Festival?
S: Film is one of my most important passions, and although I love the art of film, I also like the administrative and business side of the industry. I remember as a kid been amazed by some of their marketing campaigns to promote some of their most important films. I loved when they had posters outside the theaters, trailers on TV, and promotional campaigns with other brands, for example some of the ones that come to my mind immediately are, the toys for Kung Fu Panda 2 inside the McDonald’s happy meal, and collecting the Avengers Dr. Pepper twelve pack to get all the characters. Film has been one of the few things that has always been in my life, that is why immediately after learning that the Communications Department at NIU had their own film festival that students could participate in, something in me sparked and I knew that I needed to be part of it right away. Reality Bytes combines my two passions, art of film and business. Having the opportunity to watch incredible short films from students around the world and analyze them is an incredible opportunity to learn more about the craft of filmmaking. But also, I was lucky to be part of the social media committee my first year, which technically turned into Marketing by the end of the festival and now having the opportunity to come back as Director of Marketing I can say that it has been a wonderful experience in every way. It’s really hard to find something that combines the two things you are the most interested in life.
L: What encouraged you to participate in this event? What’s your role in it?
S: I am the Director of Marketing for Reality Bytes, which means that I am responsible for developing and maintaining a brand identity. I am also in charge of all the promotional efforts to advertise the festival to the NIU campus and the entire DeKalb community. The reason why I am participating in this event is because I had the incredible opportunity to apply my business knowledge in creating a marketing campaign to promote Reality Bytes and also solidify the brand itself. The world evolves incredibly fast, and it was time for Reality Bytes to start its journey into a more streamlined brand identity that can be more easily identified by a larger audience. This is an interesting challenge that I wanted to help with. I wanted to work and try to help Reality Bytes take a step forward in terms of innovation and brand identity. But even more, the most important thing that encouraged me to be a part of this event was having the ability to showcase the visions of the artists. Every year, they raise their voices, and many of these films reflect incredibly complex topics and offer very interesting and profound commentary on them.
L: Will this be your first time attending and/or working an event at the Egyptian Theatre?
S: This will be my second time attending and working with the Egyptian Theater. That’s because the director of the festival, Dr. Laura Vazquez, decided that it was time to innovate and try something totally different from previous years. 2024 was the first time that Reality Bytes was held at the Egyptian Theatre, and it was also my first time working with the Egyptian Theatre as well.
L: What do you hope your experience at the Egyptian Theatre will be like?
S: We are very excited to be back again at the Egyptian Theatre; we had an incredible time last year. We think that being at the Egyptian Theatre really helped us provide a better experience overall for our audience. But for this year, we hope to have another great night of film in what I call the cultural house of DeKalb County. Audience preferences are changing; people are looking for more engaging experiences for themselves. That is why providing a unique presentation is the way to maintain our audience and get more. Also, we are focused on delivering the best quality to all the people who will be present, but in order to achieve that, we needed a venue that already had all these accommodations, and the Egyptian is the perfect place for the job. We loved our tour of the venue and saw the great investment that the Egyptian Theatre has been making to keep up with current technology. I believe that by being at the Egyptian, we might reach more people from the student and general community in DeKalb and do what we have always wanted to do, which is unite everybody to experience the magic of cinema.
L: Is there one film you’re especially interested in seeing the audience’s reaction to?
S: All our lineup of shorts that will be screened are incredible pieces of work—interesting films that touch upon different topics and genres, taking our audience into different adventures and perspectives. But if I had to pick one, I would say that the two winners for both the narrative and documentary categories were my favorites, just by a little bit, although I didn’t take any part in deciding the final winners since that is the job of a special panel of judges. These films will take the audience on two journeys that will provide very interesting ideas, artistic choices, and incredible storytelling. I can’t wait to experience them again with a large audience at the Egyptian Theatre. I am sure that the public will love them since they are very strong pieces of art. One of the most interesting things about the night is watching the films and deciding which one is the best, and the incredible part is that even if the film you thought was the best didn’t win, the audience has the opportunity to pick their favorite film for the night as well. Regardless, the night will be magical, with an incredible lineup of very special films that all have something to say and an experience to offer.
