A film festival submission about a tattooed hipster puppet has earned a pair of Red River College students a $2,500 prize.

Modern Love, a five-minute short by first-year Creative Communications students Matthew Dyck and Tedi Gilmartin, was the third-place winner at this year’s Big Rock Eddies Short Film Festival in Calgary.

The humorous short, which details the “un-traditional” romance between a woman named Blaire and a puppet (sorry, “plush person”) named Zane, began as a student project for Gilmartin and Dyck’s advertising class.

The pair then entered the project in the Eddies’ inaugural short film festival (newly rebranded after 22 years celebrating mock ads and commercials for Big Rock Breweries.)

This year’s event drew close to 50 submissions — all based on the theme of “tradition” — which were then reviewed by a panel of judges that included Emmy-winning producer Chad Oakes and Hell On Wheels star Anson Mount.

This marks the fifth consecutive year that CreComm students have placed in the competition, and the first year that a CreComm video entry brought home an award.

Visit the Big Rock site to view the top three winning entries.