Four films made by students have been chosen to be showcased in the Los Angeles Film Festival. All four films will be shown on June 15 and June 22 at Regal Cinemas.
“You and Me,” directed by Amanda Reiter ’14 features more than 400 photos chronicling a young boy and girl through hand drawn scenarios. The movie stars Jackie Carr ’14 and Nick Brooks ’14.
Reiter singlehandedly wrote and shot the entire film. The shooting of “You and Me” was similar to that of stop-motion animation. She printed all of the photos and placed a piece of see-through plastic over each photo and drew the scenario, tweaking it on each photo. When pieced together, the video’s runtime was two minutes and 15 seconds.
“Although the process of creating the film was really challenging, it was definitely worth it,” Reiter said.
Another film, titled “Finding Erica Jones,” is an animation written and directed by Natalie Markiles ’13 about a detective trying to solve a case. Markiles, George Khabbaz and August Blum did the animation during the Summer Film Program.
“Forest King,” which also will be shown at the Los Angeles Film festival, is directed by Nikta Mansouri ’15 and Nat Motulsky, a student at Seattle Academy High School. The film is about a girl who has the ability to transport herself and her little brother into books and have adventures with the characters. Joss Saltzman ’16 stars in the film, which was shot during the Harvard-Westlake Summer Film Camp. The process took three weeks in total, one week for preparation, another week to shoot and the final week to edit and make the final film.
“It’s Not Just One,” a public service announcement directed by Michael Kellman ’16, Sarah McAllister ’15, Kelly Morrison ’16 and summer school students Kyra Perez and Jordan Seibel, raises awareness about the mentality behind pollution. The film raises the point that if people believe that cleaning one piece of trash will not make a difference, then eventually the Earth will have billions of pieces of trash from all the people who share that mentality about littering.
The film was made at Righteous Conversations Project during the summer at the Upper School, where students got the chance to meet Holocaust survivors.
“Some of the inspiration comes from the Holocaust survivor stories that really show how one person can make a huge difference,” Kellman said.
In addition to the holocaust survivor stories, McAllister had another reason to make a film about pollution.
“Whenever I do anything outdoorsy, from taking a walk to scuba diving, I can see what exactly we can conserve if we just tried, and it is always pretty beautiful,” McAllister said.
