Around 100 people crowded into the White River High School theater Tuesday, May 31 for the inaugural Golden Hive Film Festival.
They weren’t watching Hitchcock, Varda or Kurosawa. No, these film buffs were there for the next generation of photographers, editors and movie-makers.
It was the final project for high-schoolers in video production teacher Keelyn Turgeon’s advanced video class. Around two dozen students worked for five weeks to create a dozen short films, each premiering that night.
Their stories covered the classic stuff of adolescence — sweet skateboarding tricks, baking a cake, getting your period, friendship, romance and self discovery, and even one man’s quest to overcome his irrational hatred of roads.
Turgeon, a White River grad herself, has worked in videography for more than two decades. She owns and runs Blue Stellar, a local video production company.
This is Turgeon’s first year teaching; the district hired her to reboot the video program at the high school, she said.
Turgeon said her students have learned about teamwork and storytelling, and gained confidence in their own abilities from learning to craft, film, edit and showcase movies of their own. They came up with the “Golden Hive” name, she said.
One of those students was Emma Pipiton. She and Brooke Kelly made the film “Not So Sweet Dreams,” in which Emma eats a piece of candy that sends her into a hyper-vivid bad dream.
Now a senior, she’s been taking the video production class since she was a freshman. Emma, 18, said she likes to start with the music when crafting a film, building the rest of the film around that soundtrack.
Her favorite movie is Top Gun, and before you ask — yes, she loved the new sequel.
Marshall Miller, a senior who made the movie “Open Your Eyes” with his twin Mason Miller, said film has been a hobby for him since he started making ski videos at 12.
They wrote a script, but Marshall said the brothers’ movie, which centers around two guys trying to get girlfriends in a world where all women have gone blind, was really a chance for them to have fun.
“We wanted to do, like, a ‘Dumb & Dumber’ type of thing,” Marshall, 19 said. “It was really just us goofing around, having fun with it.”
Now a senior about to enter the wider world, Marshall said he’s interested in working on extreme sports videography and documentaries, such as the sports photography and video content made by Red Bull.
Marshall was pleased by the turnout for the film premieres, and added his praise for Turgeon and her class.
“She’s an amazing teacher, she knows what she’s doing,” he said. “She’s really good at what she does.”
Allivia Butler and Jack Carter created the film “Horror Ghost.” In the film, a group of friends investigate rumors of a ghost haunting one of the high school’s bathrooms.
A fan of horror and “creepy things,” Butler, a sophomore, said she gets inspiration from movies like Saw and Sweeney Todd.
“I see an opportunity to … take the cheesy aspects of (horror), but make it more realistic.”
From forgetting to bring a memory card to learning the perils of bad lighting, Turgeon extolled the many lessons of filmmaking her students have learned — and the pride they found in their work along the way.
“I really think it’s a great community to express what you’re interested in, even if you’re like, ‘Well, outside of this class, this would have people looking at me strange,’” Butler, the student, said. “(You can) express yourself in a different way and learn something completely new.”
