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When Torey Lenart, a sophmore at St. Viator High School in Arlington Heights, was watching Pirates of the Caribbean on DVD, she popped in disc two and played the special features. “I know this sounds cheesy, but when I saw how they put it all together and all of the steps they took, I started falling in love with filmmaking,” she says.
Lenart films area high-school football games, and that hands-on process—combined with the knowledge she’s gained by watching DVDs—inspired her to pursue a career in filmmaking.
But unlike other 15-year-olds who dream of Hollywood, Lenart is taking concrete steps to get there. This summer, she is one of 99 teens in nine cities across the country participating in the Samsung Mobile Fresh Films competition. One of the country’s largest teen filmmaking contests, the event gives selected teens just one week to create, shoot and edit a short film in a predetermined genre. In Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, it’s comedy. (Boston, St. Louis and Portland teens are making action films while teens in Dallas, New Orleans and Salt Lake City are creating dramas.)
The teens—who go through a competitive application process—work together as teams, doing everything from casting to storyboarding to managing production schedules. They learn some real-world lessons doing so.
Sarah Moshman, a former Samsung Mobile Fresh Filmmaker and now a senior intern with the contest, remembers stressing over making sure filming wrapped before a child actor exceeded his eight-hour legal work limit, and moving filming indoors when a rainstorm stopped an outdoor shoot. Now a University of Miami graduate who plans to move to L.A. , Moshman says the experience taught her things she couldn’t learn in film school. “Each film presents new problems. You learn to think on your feet and you figure out how you are going to handle [them],” Moshman says.
Lenart and her 10 Chicago peers film in the city from Sunday 20 to July 26. The final product will be posted online, along with films from the other cities, for everyone and anyone to watch. American Idol–style voting by the public (online or via text message) will determine winners in each category. The top three go on to compete in another round of voting to determine one grand-prize winner.
In addition to getting the public’s feedback, a team of industry judges—this year they include actors Sean Astin and Tom Skerritt and director Clare Kilner—vote and provide feedback. The winners go to the American Film Institute Fest on November 8 in Los Angeles, where their film will be screened. They also get laptops and mobile phones.
But this immersion filmmaking experience doesn’t end there. Some former student filmmakers, like Moshman, return in subsequent years for internships where they learn about supervisory industry roles.
“Although it seems just like a filmmaking competition, it is more than that,” says Aviva Kleiner, marketing director at Dreaming Tree Films, the Chicago-based producers behind Samsung Mobile Fresh Films and other teen competitions. “It’s empowering them to sample a career and gives them the tools and resources to help them realize they can do anything.”
Online voting runs from Jul 31–Aug 27. To vote on the Chicago comedies, go to fresh-films.com Aug 14–Aug 20. Return Aug 21–Aug 27 to vote for the grand prize winner.
