By Haley Yates
In eighth grade, juniors Abbie Vandruff, Calvin Hebst and Poom Wattanapan came up with an idea for a film that explained the different stages of grief. They would reflect the stages through a group of friends, each character representing a different stage.
“We knew how ambitious the project would be, so we left it aside for three years, until we heard about South By Southwest,” Abbie said. “We then pitched the idea to our group and just decided to go for it.”
South by Southwest (SXSW) is a film and music festival held in Austin, TX every March. Within two months, the group combined their efforts and created a five-minute short film for a competition within the festival.
“A good film is really hard to make,” Calvin said. “Every time I work on a project, whether it’s for school, work or just for fun, I am blown away by the amount of work it takes.”
Calvin said creating a film is a process that takes longer than most people think. The crew made a shot list, script, schedule, character descriptions and set up casting for actors within a few weeks. Shooting took place over several days, and it was filmed in multiple locations.
“The first day, I was up for 22 hours along with Poom, Abbie and Garrett who had to jump into a freezing lake,” Calvin said.
A portion of the film was shot at a lake house three hours away, and it began to storm the night they filmed outside. High voltage lights with heavy umbrellas taped to the top were sand bagged to a slippery dock, and actor/director Garret Monk and actor Garrett Braun were submerged in the icy lake for several shots along with cameraman Poom Wattanapan.
“We of course did not plan to take literally an entire day for three minutes of the film, but there was heavy rain and lightning the whole night, and because this was the only day we had all of the actors, we were forced to go through with it,” Calvin said. “In the end we actually got the shots we needed, which I did not expect. Luckily the other shoots were a little less crazy.”
During planning, Calvin said he felt like they were doing too much, but the crew’s willingness to stay at Cafe Brazil until 1 a.m. planning solved a lot of problems.
“‘Grief’ was a really good example of a lot of work that actually paid off,” Calvin said. “This is not always the case about film. I’ve worked extensively on projects where the end result is nowhere near where I wanted it to be.”
The group finished the day before SXSW submissions were due. Everybody said they pushed “Grief” to the back of their minds and focused on other projects while they waited to here back from the competition. In February, they received an email announcing their acceptance to the high school short premiere.
“I was happy,” senior director/actor Garrett Monk said. “I honestly didn’t know what to expect, because we didn’t know how good the other high schools were with film, and also considering it’s state wide, it’s hard to judge.”
The film premiered on March 14 at SXSW and will premiere again at Dallas Film Fest on April 12.
“Seeing the film in SXSW was absolutely surreal – the entire experience has been a really amazing opportunity, and I am very grateful,” Abbie said.