Senior Lux Walker tells her eight-year-old brother from behind the camera not to smile as do take their seventh take in a traumatic flashback scene. Walker’s group tries shooting the scene again but every time her brother looks at the camera, he has a big smile. One of the group members suggests giving him chocolate chips to keep in his mouth to stop him from smiling. After a couple more tries he finally keeps a serious face and the scene wraps.

“We had to shoot that so many times with him, and he just wanted to laugh because it was such a fun environment,” Walker said. “We had all these lights going on, and it was a silly concept.”

The Communications Magnet participated in an annual Weekend Race competition where sophomore, junior and senior classes were broken into groups and shot a five-minute movie over the weekend based on props they picked. Each movie was reviewed by a panel of judges and the best were given awards.

“Some of the best stuff that we’ve ever done has actually been through the weekend race because it’s time for [them] to get together, spend 48 hours together, which sometimes sounds like a lot,” Communications Magnet teacher Brent Morton said. “However, it’s some of the best work because [they] prioritize that time together.”

In the competition, each grade level had a different due date for when they can submit their movie. Sophomores had from Friday to Tuesday morning, juniors had until Monday afternoon and seniors had until Monday morning to submit their final movie.

“The time constraint is pretty difficult,” junior Drew Baker said. “And as the grades go up, you have less time.”

The Friday before the weekend, each team sends two members to spin the wheel of quotes, locations, props, cinematic techniques, lighting techniques and elements to be included in the movie. Before they spun the wheel, Morton gave advice to the teams competing.

He said the best way to include the different components was to integrate them as smoothly as possible instead of just throwing something in because it’s very obvious when they do.

Walker said incorporating them into the storyline sticks out to the judges more because they’re on the lookout for the required components. One of them is a quote typically from pop culture which has to be included in the dialogue.

“The best ones that we’ve ever done are ones that we can send off the contest later,’ Morton said. “And most of the time you have no idea where it came from because the quotes are integrated so well.”

Some of the props the teams were required to put in were sugar and antlers. Senior Jackson Penny said he included the sugar by having a tea making scene and included the antlers by having a stuffed animal.

“You kind of have to deceptively dust it in there,” Penny said. “Like how you season a steak.”

Morton also said when shooting the scenes, students shouldn’t take too big of a risk because you sacrifice your story. Instead get your basic shots down and if you got an idea of something really cool and you’ve got time, then go for it.

“Tell your story first, then if you have time, take that extra shot,” Morton said.

He said shooting a three and a half to a five minute movie is the “sweet spot” to the teams. Don’t try to cram to get five minutes exact.

He also said to the teams to not put bloopers in the movie, because what they’re really doing is trying to manipulate the judges to get them to laugh and vote for their movie.

“I’ve seen some real funny things,” Morton said. “People hanging upside down. I’ve seen people asleep in closets. [Someone] in a trash bag last year.”

He said they have to remember their audience when making their movie. Their audience is their parents, grandparents, little brothers and sisters so PG-13 is best.

Penny said when choosing everyone’s roles in his team, senior Rachel Yahalom took over as director because she gets stuff done. Senior Rebecca Crasneanu was the main talents and senior Jackson Burnett was on sound for the majority of it. Penny did whatever that was needed to be done, whether that was acting, setting up the shots or editing.

Walker said for her team, since this was their senior year, everyone has worked with each other before and knows which job they’re good at. Walker was voted to be the director of the group, senior London Miller was the editor and senior Mandy Pham worked on audio.

“It’s what you’re comfortable with doing, and especially for a tight race, time is very like of the essence,” Walker said.

Walker said on that Friday at around 6 p.m., their team met up at the “safe house” where a member of the team volunteers their house to use throughout the weekend. They stayed there until 10:30 p.m. discussing the props they chose, coming up with the story, writing the scripts and casting their actors.

She said each team can have up to eight people involved in the movie and since they only had six people, they could get two outsiders. One of them was her younger brother, Felix Walker.

“We honestly finish on a good note Friday night,” Walker said. “We had a set story, and we kind of had everything planned on how we wanted to go the next day.”

She said her team met up on Saturday around eight a.m. and started shooting right away. After they get a good batch of clips they shot, they transfer it to their editor on set.

Penny said when working under a time crunch, they have to edit while they shoot or else they would start getting behind as he learned from previous Weekend Races.

Walker said her team ended Saturday in a really good place, because they already had a good chunk of the video edited. Her team still had the entirety of Sunday to reshoot some scenes they wanted, get some extra shots and then finish the final edits.

Penny said his team used almost all of the time as best as they could because there wasn’t a moment where he wasn’t doing anything, whether it was finding sound effects, filming, setting up a shot, digging a hole or telling someone else to do something.

Walker said during the race, her team already knew how to use the equipment and worked really well together on sharing their ideas, finding a good medium of what they all agree on, what fits with their story and what makes the most sense.

“I worked with these people a lot and I’m friends with all of them,” Walker said. “So we have a good communication skills with each other.”

She said she learned from her past years of Weekend Races that shooting complicated videos takes longer which they don’t always have enough time to do. This year, her team went for a simpler story to execute well.

Walker said her favorite scene to shoot was the main therapy session where they were shooting in one of the member’s houses. There was a big window with natural lighting along with their own lights making it a very controlled environment.

“Everything was very under our control which made it go really smoothly,” Walker said. “I enjoyed that because we could do as many shots and takes as we wanted.”

Penny said his favorite scene to shoot was when they had to incorporate a quote from Dairy of a Wimpy Kid into a scene where he walks out of the therapist’s office.

“Don’t call me. Don’t come by my house. We’re done,” Penny said.

He also said the most difficult scene to shoot was when they had to pile dirt on Crasneanu which ended up getting a pretty cool shot but it was pretty intense and she was miserable the entire time.

“You could tell in the air everyone was like, ‘oh my god, we are digging a hole and putting this dirt on this poor girl,'” Penny said.

Walker said one of the difficult scenes to shoot was when Felix was in them because he has never acted before. The flashback scene had a very dark tone but he kept laughing.

She said the one time her brother did the scene without smiling, the other actor messed up his line for the first time.

“Our editor ended up making that work,” Walker said. “She used the audio from one of the other takes where my brother was smiling, and we overlaid it [so] you can’t really tell.”

She also said they ran into the issue of recording time because they were shooting so many scenes that their SSD kept giving notifications of “30 seconds left of recording… 16 seconds left…” At that point, they had to take it out and unload all the clips.

Walker said when shooting the movie, they reworded some of the script to make sure it sounded more natural and to see what worked best.

“Sometimes we write something out and we think it sounds natural in the script,” Walker said. “But then once it said out loud, we’re like, ‘wait, maybe this would convey it better.'”

Penny said towards the end of Saturday, his team realized that they needed to start working faster and everyone just started flowing.

“This is when people realize that you need to work as a team to get things done, that you can start pulling all the way and suddenly things get done,” Penny said.

On Sunday, Walker’s team had a few more scenes left to shoot and by one p.m., they were done shooting and only had editing left.

“Our editor had an entire day until the next morning to edit,” Walker said. “So we definitely did good with the time management.”

As seniors, Walker’s team had until nine a.m. on Monday to submit their final movie. Their movie came in around ten minutes before the due time.

“You always have until the little last minute,” Walker said.

Walker said her biggest improvement from her past projects and Weekend Races was the audio. This was the best project she’s had with really good edited audio.

She said audio is one of the few things that can really mess up the whole look of the film, especially if you can’t hear what the actors are saying or if you hear wind in the background.

“Audio is kind of a little bit looked over,” Walker said. “It’s one of those really, really important aspects.”

Penny said he feels that he can be proud of this project since his last communications projects haven’t went as well as he hoped.

“It means a lot to me because it’s the last weekend race for high school,” Penny said.

Penny said he feels like either the junior or sophomore teams is going to come out with some crazy stuff when everyone watches the movies at the award ceremony. He thinks the junior class has it better than the seniors do because they work really well together.

“If you ever walk in a group of them, you’ll know this is a community of people,” Penny said.

The awards ceremony was on the following Wednesday where the Communications Magnet watched the movies each team created. The top four movies were announced along with specific awards some teams received and then the overall winner where Walker’s team won.

“I was filled with anticipation, but my team and I were so excited and happy that we won,” Walker said.

Walker said she enjoyed watching the other team’s movies and hearing critiques from the judges during the ceremony.

Walker said some advice for those competing in future Weekend Races is to think about mistakes they’ve made in the past shooting or in past competitions and make changes to improve their work ethic and final product.

She also said even though it’s a big challenge for the younger grades to work with the time constraint, what makes this competition really difficult is not being able to work with your team. It’s important that everyone is putting in the work, having an open mindset to each other and is respectful.

“It can like help you make a great final product and something that you’re proud of as a team,” Walker said.