The Teen Filmmaker Festival
Kalamazoo’s Ninth Annual Teen Filmmaker Festival comes to the RAVE theatre this Sunday. The festival showcases short films created entirely by young Michigan film artists. Listen to James Sanford's review of a few of this year's films.
Update: The winners of the film festival have been announced! Go to the Kalamazoo Public Library's YouTube channel to view clips from the winning films.
Making the films
Now we’ll take a behind the scenes look at how these films are made. WMUK’s Alyssa Trager talked with two teens about their experiences filming and editing their works:
Mattawan High School student Becky Burgen is one of the finalists in Kalamazoo’s Ninth Annual Teen Filmmaker Festival. It’s sponsored by Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and the Kalamazoo Public Library. This is the second time Burgen has been a finalist. This time around she created a public service announcement called Be You.
[Becky Burgen] “I like making the public service announcements just to get that emotion, show emotion through my films and to get people to kinda realize it. Because you always hear people do essays and they want to persuade people to do certain things; and an essay can do so much, but when you see it on a public service announcement, you see it. And you get more of the emotion out of it.”
Burgen shot her film in one 45-minute session in her bedroom. To set the mood for her piece, Burgen turned off all the lights in the room except for a spotlight. The dramatic lighting plays off the blue paint on her bedroom walls.
[Becky Burgen] “In the beginning it is just a girl, my friend Melissa Janecke. She is sitting in a chair and she just has got a plain shirt on. But then I am the one that is making her change and I am doing all this stuff I am putting on her make-up, I am messing with her hair I am doing all these kinds of changes. Each one is like a new scene of her but none of them are really her. It is always what other people want her to be.”
Burgen says the inspiration for her piece came from her own experience trying to find acceptance growing up.
[Becky Burgen] “When I was younger I always wanted to fit in with everyone. I tried to change who I was. And then I realized through high school that I shouldn’t have to change to be with people that…somewhere along the line you are going to find that group of people that are going to accept you the way you are and that you don’t have to change one bit.”
Teen Filmmaker Festival finalist Morgan King is also a student at Mattawan High School. Her work Winter Wonderland, a music short to the song Antlers by Bear, is a very different piece than Burgen’s. She worked on the project for a month before shooting the film in her basement over winter break with help from a friend.
[Morgan King] “It started out with, we were making little paper snowflakes. In my head I just got this idea picturing the title of the film “Winter Wonderland.” So we ended up just hanging a bunch of snowflakes that we cut out from the ceiling right at about eye level with where my friend was standing. And we had put cotton all over the ground and put lights underneath the cotton. Then we hung up lights on the back wall and made it like a, a wintery sort of feel.”
The movie took King a few hours to record. But she says the editing process took much longer. King admits she became frustrated with the technology and her family was tired of hearing the song she chose for her film. But her favorite moment came when the snowflakes started to fall in her basement.
[Morgan King] “We glued little pieces of paper onto my friend’s face so she looked like a snowflake. If something funny would happen she would think it is funny, but she couldn’t laugh because they would start falling off.”
Michelle Stempien says the Michigan Teen Filmmaker Festival tries to get young people involved in amateur filmmaking. Stempien is curator of education for the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. She says festival judges received the films in late January and picked the finalists earlier this month. Stempien says the rules require that the filmmakers do most of the work and not just recycle material created by others.
[Michelle Stempien] “The Devil is in the details and if a teen shows that they really took a lot of time, worked carefully and just really made a great product. That is usually the one that stands out. And sometimes it is a really short film, you know, it is just a couple minutes long. It is not the longest ones that win.”
More than 70 films were submitted for the 2012 Michigan Teen Filmmaker Festival. But only finalists like King and Burgen will have their films presented on a big screen. The showing at the RAVE Theatre in downtown Kalamazoo starts Sunday afternoon at 2:30. Tickets are free and the audience will have a chance to vote for their favorite films in the “People’s Choice Award” competition. Come early to get tickets, though. They usually go very quickly.
Other Events:
Author of the poetry book “Traffic Stop” and children’s book “How the Moon Regained Her Shape,” Dr. Janet Heller, will be holding a fiction writing workshop Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Portage District Library. Registration is required.
Are you regretting buying that telescope you don’t know how to use? The Kalamazoo Astronomical Society is holding a telescope workshop this Saturday at 1 p.m. in the Portage District Library. The workshop is part of the “Introduction to Amateur Astronomy” lecture series.
The first film in a five-part PBS series called Black in Latin America will be shown by the Hispanic American Council in Kalamazoo at 6 p.m. Saturday. Members of local cultural organizations will hold a discussion after each film. The first film will focus on Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Watch some high-flying action Saturday at “In the Center Ring,” a circus-themed collaboration between acrobats The Aerial Angels and the Kalamazoo Concert Band. The show at Miller Auditorium on Western Michigan University's campus at 7:30 p.m.
Listen to poetry and prose about the history of Kalamazoo on Sunday. The 8th annual Artifactory event at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum will feature free readings from local poets and other writers. The event will be in the Mary Jane Stryker Theater at 1:30 p.m.
“Two Sistas and a Brotha: A Celebration of African American Art Songs & Spirituals” at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek will feature music from African American composers sung by Alfreynn Roberts, Carmen Bell, and Dr. Gerald Blanchard. The performance will be on Sunday at 3 p.m. in the Davidson Visual and Performing Arts Center Auditorium on KCC’s campus.
View stunning craftsmanship and learn about the contributions of African American women in U.S. history at the same time. The YWCA in Kalamazoo is displaying quilts from black artists from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday and hosting a panel discussion at noon. Please RSVP by Friday, the 24th.
Tuesday night, listen to the Mialtin Zhezha’s violin recital in the Dalton Center Recital Hall on Western Michigan University’s campus. The recital is part of the WMU School of Music’s Alumni Series. The concert starts at 8:15 p.m.