Directing a motion picture can be harder then most people realize, especially for young people hoping to find their voice in the medium.
Thankfully, there’s the Digital Youth Film Festival, which according to Julio Alcala with Barrio Productions and who helped produce some of the student films, was a great chance for students to get hands on experience with home cinema.
“This is a great opportunity for film makers, actors, teachers and comedian members to get together and watch films and also see that there is a chance for local filmmaking to spread,” said Alcala. This year’s Oxnard College kicked off Friday at 7 p.m. at the Oxnard Plaza Cinemas 14.
Screenings of films made by both high school and college students premiered, with a second screening and award ceremony Saturday evening. A series of workshops were also held as part of the festival at Oxnard College Saturday morning from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
These workshops included an editing demo with Final Cut Express presented by Terry Schulenburg from Apple, a lecture by “Pinky and the Brain” director Nelson Ricenos on how to make a pitch to get a show on the air.
There was also a three session class that uses three different groups of students to star in and direct a movie in three acts, which was edited together and filmed towards the end of the event. The instructors for this last workshop where Ernie Vasquez, Gustavo Lopez, and Chris Chavez, who also created Contraband TV, which won Best Comedy in the College division of the festival.
Vasquez says that most of the work for the workshop, called Just Add Video, came before any students walked into the class. “It was a little stressful in the beginning,” said Vasquez. “All the preproduction was a lot of work, the actual class was fun for us.”
According to Alcala, the workshop’s purpose as a whole was to give the students a chance to see how hard it is to make a film and foster interest. “I would say that (making a movie) is as hard as it is to tell a good joke,” said Acala. “At first you can’t tell it right, you’re like ‘oh, how did that joke go?’ and this and that.
When you first make a film, it isn’t fine tuned. It’s the same thing with music, you just have to fine tune it. The more you practice, the better you get.” After Saturday’s screenings, awards were handed out, with separate categories for both high school and college student-made movies. Categories included drama, comedy, horror/science fiction, documentary and experimental. Lia Woodward’s film “Dear Shakespeare” took home the Best Drama in the high school division.
Woodward says that the award came somewhat as a surprise. “This is my first time doing this festival,” said Woodward. “I’ve never won an award for film before, so that was pretty exciting.” Some of the films in the festival contained relatively racy content, which according to event organizer Kitty Merrill resulted in some careful planning.
The creators of Contraband TV even went as far as creating two different versions of the same film, with a carefully edited version for the festival and Oxnard College TV, and a second one with the more controversial content intact, which can be found online at www.myspace.com/contrabandtv. While Merrill is not a fan of censorship in any capacity, she is willing to admit that it’s necessary to a small extent in these situations.
“The reason I’m interested in this is letting people have their voices and try to let them express themselves the way they want to express themselves as much as possible, but we do need to walk a line,” said Merrill. According to event organizers, the festival was a success this year, with more students then expected registering for the workshops and a great audience turn out for the screenings.
Tom Friedman came down from Nordhoff High School to enjoy the festival, and despite being a video production teacher, managed to learn something from the festivities. “I came down here partially to see how they would put this together, and to learn not only techniques, but also the process on getting people involved, and I’m very impressed,” said Friedman. “I went into the computer lab, sat in on the Final Cut editing program this morning. I’ve been using Final Cut for years, but I learned two new things.”
