The Hamptons is a hot spot for film and television shoots. Everything from “The Affair” to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” has had a scene or two filmed in the area. But it’s not just visitors making movies here: Local students are getting their start as filmmakers, and the arts community has been honoring them for some time now.
Guild Hall in East Hampton screened the winners of its 14th annual Student Film Contest on Sunday afternoon, March 26, with nine films selected out of 46 created entirely by East End youth. The winners were students from the Ross School, Springs School and Hayground School, from grades one to 12, who spent the last year making films in their school’s respective film classes. The winning films ranged in genres and topics, from the environmental documentary “The Estuary in Our Neighborhood” by Springs School students Lily Griffin and Samantha Ruano in the grades one through four category, to the silent film “Mustache 3” from Hayground School students Phoenix Bliss, Leonardo Dougherty and Charlie Troy in the grades five through eight category. The trio said their curriculum at Hayground had students learning the basics of filmmaking and how to operate film technology during their regular schooldays.
“We do reading and writing in class, like normal stuff, while also learning a lot about film,” 10-year-old Phoenix said.
All three students divided up the workload, with Leonardo, age 11, acting and shooting the film, Charlie, age 10, acting, writing the script and composing the storyboards, and Phoenix as the “tech guy,” as his colleagues called him, filming with Canon cameras, using drones for additional footage and managing the technical aspects of making the movie. The students have been taking the film class for more than two years, as evidenced by the two previous installments of “Mustache” and a fourth installment already in the works.
“Having the three of us together was hard because we all had opinions and it was hard to agree on what we should do and what we shouldn’t do,” Charlie said. “Getting everyone together on one idea was tough.”
“The best part was actually getting done with it and watching it because behind the scenes,” Leonardo said. “It was really funny to watch.”
Another returning contestant was 10-year-old Milla Campomar, also from Hayground, with her stop-motion animated film “Full Circle,” which won top prize in the grades one through four category. This is the third animated movie that she made on the Animation-ish application, along with having done a documentary in the four years she’s been taking the class.
“The hardest part of animating is making a frame fit into the movie and editing it to make it right,” Milla said.
Other winners were looking to test the audience members’ nerves, like Markk Tong, 19, of Ross School with his horror film, “Time for Bed.” Mr. Tong said that the film class he took at Ross School taught him about fine-tuning movie scripts and using more advanced editing technology like Final Cut Pro to create a more dynamic and professional-looking movie.
“I’m a big fan of horror films, I’ve watched them for a long time,” he said after coming in third place at the ceremony. “For my senior project I thought, ‘Why not do a horror film?’ This is the genre that people feel really uncomfortable with sometimes, but to experience something that you’d never experience in your real life is very interesting and exciting to me.”
The winners from Hayground School gave thanks to everyone involved in their projects, especially their teacher, Liz Bertsch, who has been teaching filmmaking as part of Hayground’s curriculum for nearly eight years. Ms. Bertsch explained that students learn about storytelling and filmmaking throughout the entire school year as they work with classmates both older and younger than them—ages 6 through 12—to bring out what inspires them. She said students pitch ideas for stories to film at the beginning of the school year, then spend some time fleshing out the idea. From there, Ms. Bertsch and her fellow teacher, Mbachi Kumwenda, help the students figure out what they need to do to start filming.
“It seemed like an interesting venue for storytelling and that’s the crux of the program: find a story that you want to tell and what visual technology will help you with that,” Ms. Bertsch said.
She said she got Hayground involved in the competition after contacting Jennifer Brondo, Guild Hall’s associate for theater education, about five years ago. Ms. Bertsch went on to say that students decide whether they want their films put into the competition, but there is a lesson to be learned from the experience.
“We talk about how if you put yourself in the position of possibly winning, you also put yourself in the position of possibly losing, and you have to be OK with that,” she said. “We also talk about how we might not be OK with some of the decisions made, but that’s what you give up when you submit.”
Ms. Brondo said this year’s competition had more submissions than the usual 20 to 30 in previous years, with kids from the East Hampton High School and the East Hampton Home School Group having submitted entries. She sends out emails about the competition in November to all local schools, even if they don’t have a film program, with a deadline in February. The four judges of the competition were local connoisseurs of the arts, including East Hampton Library director Dennis Fabiszak and Roundtable Theatre Company artistic director Tristan Vaughan.
“There are a lot of art shows out here, but film I don’t think gets recognized too much,” Ms. Brondo said.
Guild Hall is not alone wanting to offer an outlet for young filmmakers: The Hamptons International Film Festival was one of the sponsors of the competition this year and does see that the youth of the East End are starting to pick up cameras and yell, “action!” Because of that, HIFF has been offering volunteer programs in the festival to students in the East Hampton School District.
“One of the reasons that kids are so much more involved with film is because it’s so much more accessible to them with iPhones and iMovie and other computer programs that allow them to film and edit,” said Marissa Cangiolosi, the manager of education and community outreach and administrator to HIFF. “One of our goals is to give kids the capability to film and know how to make that film. We want to bring programming to every single age group all across the East End.”