Every year at Film School 4 Teens we receive films from our students based on a screenplay that is included in the Intro to Filmmaking course. This past year's film was "Futility" about a kid trying to avoid making his bed. This one was particularly difficult dialogue and it was a challenge for our young actors to get out all the big words. We received MANY great submissions and here we'd like to share our TOP 4 selections and award our top prize, the Golden Pineapple, to the best picture. Read below to see all the selections and what we liked in particular about each one. BEST PICTURE WINNER AT THE END OF THE POST!
Congrats to Sarah Guiltner for being our 4th place winner! She really applied what we teach in the course and her film is very solid across the board. Plus she added some original touches of her own! All the setup in the beginning about the snowball launcher was her own clever idea and it's a great complement to that character who is obviously intelligent AND messy and we see more about why that is... too smart to be bothered with cleanliness! LOL. Both characters were performed brilliantly. Great work Sarah!
Tiffany Lucero's version of Futility gets our 3rd place prize. You'll notice that much of the dialogue is has been overdubbed. We call this process "ADR" and it's used a LOT in professional filmmaking. But it's very difficult work and we are so proud of Tiffany for attempting to do it. Besides the audio, the film has very sound fundamentals with strong camera work and tight editing. Excellent job, Tiffany!
2nd place Charles Jacobson makes some bold choices in his film. The most notable is that he cast an adult in the role of the messy kid. This was a brilliant idea considering how difficult the dialogue was. The dynamic between the characters is excellent and the film is just very well shot and edited besides the great performances. We loved all the unique touches with sound and color and even special effects. Excellent work, Charles!
(CUE DRUMROLL) And finally, the WINNER of our 2021/2022 FS4T film festival.. the Golden Pineapple goes to... Dylan Reisewitz! Dylan brings strong fundamentals together with a very fun style and great performances to top out the class of 21/22 with this version of Futility. Everything comes together here from music to cinematography to characters and really made this script shine with all its difficult dialogue. Congratulations Dylan!
We're so proud of ALL our young filmmakers. It's so great to see them creating and collaborating on these films and having a blast in the process.
If you want to learn the fundamentals of filmmaking and be inspired to tell your original stories through this unparalleled art form, please consider enrolling in our Intro to Filmmaking course by visiting our STORE.
Congrats to all!