Students Enter Nikon Film Festival
Posted January 4th, 2010 in High School, HS Special Events Comments Off
Western Christian students David Reynosa (Senior), Luke Snyder(Senior), Jacob Fletcher(Sophomore), Jeremiah Curly(Senior), and Micheal Arn(Alumni) have entered a film competition hosted by Nikon called the “Nikon Film Festival”.
In November Nikon announced their contest and opened entries to anyone in the United States. The prompt for the contest was “A day through your lens” which Nikon interpreted to mean a day through your life. These students came up with a day in the life of a street performer named Jonah Noel and what a journey through creativity and music would look like to him. Out of 1400 films that were submitted to this festival theirs was chosen to be in the top 50. They now have a chance to win one out of the two grand prizes. The first prize is the judges award, the video the judges like the best out of the top 50 will receive $100,000. The second prize is the audience award $25,000 which goes to the video with the most ratings and views. The judges for the contest are
RAINN WILSON from the office
CHASE JARVIS famous photographer
and IJUSTINE famous youtuber.
To rate their video go to the link below and navigate to the upper left hand corner of the video where you will see 5 stars click on the 5th star to vote(no registration required)
“Melody of the Mind”
-Production Information-
Behind the scenes video
Here is a link to Behind the Scenes Pictures
http://s1002.photobucket.com/albums/af145/Dreynosa7/Nikon%20Festival/
“Our crew for this project was rather small. I tripled as a DP/Director/Editor and also brought along a Script supervisor(Jeremiah Curly), PA(Jacob Fletcher), Assistant Cameraman(Luke Snyder), and an AD(Micheal Arn). The entire film was shot using the Panasonic HVX200 (which I was able to purchase for an extreme discount after taking a class with History/Discovery channel director Jim Lindsay). All actors were students from Western Christian High School as well
Alan Rittenhouse: Jonah Noel
Business people/Shadow figures
Greg Sukert
Elbee Castro
Sam Zuno
Jacob fletcher
Luke Snyder
Jerimiah Curly
Our crew also constructed a dolly out of PVC pipes and skate wheels to achieve dolly shots. Post Production took around a week and the film was edited in Final Cut Pro. To stand out from the rest of the entries we decided to compose our music completely from scratch. Using Garage Band and our quick wits within two days we had a unique soundtrack. Pre-Production took around two weeks. Every day our crew would meet and brainstorm in film class on how best to tell our riveting tale. Once the idea was set in stone we went on a hunt to find our key prop- a white door. Finally finding one in an old drama bin at our school we painted it and polished it up.
The entire shoot took two days. Every morning at 5am the crew would arrive at my house where I had freshly cooked breakfast burritos waiting for them. On the first day we drove up to Mt. Baldy, and hiked up to a desolate forest. Once done we drove back to my house and whipped up some delicious sandwiches and were ready to go to the next location – The Mojave desert specifically El mirage. This proved to be an arduous task. For some reason our GPS systems did not know where El mirage was and lead us half way around the world. Finally we arrived at our location and finished shooting just before the sun shone its last light.
The second day of filming did not go as well. Early in the morning just like the previous day the crew arrived at my house. We all loaded up and took off to the second location, which was a lush green forest in San Dimas. When we arrived we were greeted not by a lush forest but a sea of dead brown grass. I had made the fatal flaw of not scouting the location; boy did I learn not to do that again. Quickly thinking I told my crew to go set up at the next location, which was a city area not to far away. In the meanwhile, I tried to figure out an alternate location to the forest. Eventually I found one, it was a tiny botanical garden near my house. Just to make sure things would go well I visited the garden while my crew and cast were eating lunch. I was greeted by the sweetest old lady and told her I was doing a tiny school project and wanted to know if I could film in the garden, she said it was fine. When I returned to the garden with a crew and cast of around 20 people, a whole door, piano, camera, tripod, monitor, and dolly her mouth fell through the floor. After 30 minutes of talking we finally assured her that we meant no harm, and were allowed to enter in the garden for a small fee of $50. The garden worked perfectly.
To view and vote for my film on Nikon click here: http://tiny.cc/Mind“
