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Photograph by Vicki Thompson

She's No Diva: Willow Glen's Brittany Allen based her short film on her own unfortunate singing experience.

Teen filmmakers show results of Cinequest summer program

By Anne Gelhaus

Local filmmakers Brittany Allen, Caitrin Hughes and Jenna Ray got the star treatment at an Aug. 16 movie premiere. Before their short films were screened at Cinema San Pedro, the three girls met the press, posed for photographers and introduced themselves to the audience.

The girls were among 17 seventh- through ninth-graders who participated in Camp Cinequest earlier this month, where they had five days to write, shoot and edit their three-minute movies.

The camp was sponsored by Cinequest, a nonprofit group that holds an annual film festival and presents Cinema San Pedro, a summer series of outdoor screenings in downtown San Jose.

The campers worked in groups to produce their movies, serving as writers, actors, directors, cameramen and sound and lighting technicians. All participants got the chance to work both on and off camera.

"I learned what I like to do," said Caitrin, a seventh-grader at Girls Middle School. "I like the acting part."

"I liked editing," said Brittany, a freshman at Westmont High School. "It was interesting to see how many clips you film and how few you actually use."

Jenna, an eighth-grader at Rolling Hills Middle School said simply, "I liked it all."

In Dude, Where's My Hair?, Jenna and Caitrin play students with a crush on Bobby Pin, the boy with the best hair in school. Outtakes during the credits at the end of the short showed just how much can go wrong in shooting even a three-minute film: Doors don't open, and actors miss entrances and flub lines.

Caitrin said it would have helped matters if actors had stuck to the script.

"A lot of people in our cast did improv, and that just made it longer," she said.

One bit that didn't make the outtake reel was when someone accidentally left the camera on for about five minutes, Jenna said.

"We have a movie of the ground and people's knees," Caitlin added.

Brittany's group made a film called Singing Impossible, inspired by her own experience. Brittany plays a girl who can't sing but tries out for a talent show anyway; it's up to her friends to tell her she can't carry a tune.

"I'm a bad singer," Brittany admitted, adding that she's not so sure about acting, either. "I hated doing the same scene over and over again. I had to pretend I wasn't looking at the camera. It was hard not to laugh."

The young filmmakers said their productions were plagued by technical difficulties: Boom mics failed to pick up dialogue, and lighting interior shots was tricky.

"Our group got the chance to reshoot a couple things, but it's still not ideal," Caitrin said.

The process helped Brittany learn a valuable lesson in filmmaking: "If you shoot it one time and it's really good, you should still film it again."

In spite of the challenges, the girls said they'd sign up for Camp Cinequest again next summer. This was the first year Cinequest offered the program; camp director Susie Mun said her staff is considering a two-week shoot next year and the program may offer multiple sessions.

The girls said they'd like to have the option of filming a longer movie.

"Scenes were taking a minute to run, and we didn't have a minute," Jenna said.

Caitrin learned what many experts in the industry know: "It's challenging to tell a whole story in three minutes."