Just because the films are silent doesn’t mean that this year’s Reel Loud Film Festival won’t make a lot of noise.

The 13th annual Reel Loud roars into Campbell Hall on Friday. This year’s festival features 15 short, silent films made by UCSB students. Instead of relying on digital mediums in the filming process, however, the filmmakers must use only traditional film. Festival producer Amy Hampson said this process helps film students understand what the early age of filmmaking was like.

“Every year, Reel Loud focuses on a different period of film history. More and more, we use digital film, but this is a way to remind us of some of the things we learn in film class, some of the roots of film,” Hampson said. “It helps us understand where we’ve come from.”

The filmmakers in this year’s festival are vying for the grand prize: the Golden Reel award – plus $250.

Jesse Hoy, a senior film studies major, said his entry, a takeoff on the Odyssey that is titled “Lucille,” presented him with certain difficulties that a regular film – a “talkie” – would not.

“I do feel it’s more challenging to do a silent film. In a regular film, you can cheat with dialogue. You can just say what you want to get across,” Hoy said. “But without sound, you have to find more subtle ways of getting your message across.”

Dave Lindsay, another senior film studies major, said his challenge was packing his plot into his six-minute film, the Western “Rattlesnake Jake.”

“It’s an ambitious plot. There’s a lot you need to put in a film in order to capture what makes a Western a Western. But the music that’s being played [along with the film] really helps drive the plot,” Lindsay said.

The festival will also include the presentation of the Esteemed Alumni Award to Toni Graphia, who has written for such television shows as “Carniv