Lake Worth resident Jeremy Nelson’s “Dying to Live” won Best Student Short at the Miami Underground Film Festival, which ran mid-March. “It was exciting just to be accepted, much less to win ‘Best Student Short’,” said Nelson. Just its second year in running, the independent-focused festival has already tripled in size, making it a serious competition.

Having grown up an hour outside Las Vegas, Nelson moved to Florida four years ago. His interests in film, however, originated with a VHS camcorder his dad bought when he was eleven years old. In high school he bought an 8mm camcorder and began making “spoof” films with his friends. “When I moved to Florida, I was in a corporate-business mindset.” Now twenty-seven, Nelson has returned to filmmaking with the Palm Beach Film School.

“Dying to Live,” a short comedy about a struggling musician who, upon a series of ill-fated events, attempts suicide, won Best Student Short. Nelson created the concept due to the school’s two-location suggestion and molded the script to the three-act structure taught in scriptwriting. Having cast for his next short film, “Check M8,” Nelson is now working on a short drama about a Haitian family that is framed by an immigration officer.