Courtesy photos.
SANTA MARIA — Films created by Righetti High School artists, using both traditional and state-of-the-art digital technology, were recently shown at the Central Coast Film Society’s Student Film Competition in San Luis Obispo.
Nine of the 17 films in the festival came from Righetti. The films actually were created during the fall semester and had to meet special criteria: two characters, one location, three minutes in length and a “digital distraction” concept. Some students made funny films while others made them dramatic.
“Through this process students are getting hands-on experience learning skills they can use to enter the film industry,’’ said film teacher Jacob R. Gustafson. “They use industry-standard technology and learn 21st Century skills like collaboration, creativity, communication, and technological literacy. I’m very proud of my students for taking the work seriously and performing at a professional level on this project.”
The students started the process by forming into groups, brainstorming a concept and writing a screenplay including the dialogue. Then, they had to storyboard every shot of the film, shoot cameras, edit their films using Adobe Premiere – which is industry-standard editing software and also used at seven of the 10 universities in California that have a film program. Students finished by creating an account with Film Freeway, which is the industry-standard way of submitting films to professional film festivals, and filling out technical information about the film, uploading their film to the service and submitting it.
The students included Chase Bjorklund, Jordyn Rae, Raul Plascencia, Kennedy Cuello, Gaby Sierra – Kai Barr, Karma Stodola, Michael Ortega and Austin Turner – Isaiah Abrigo, Brodie Miller, Timothy Nguyen, Charles Neal -Brian Werneburg, Julian Garcia, Josh Rankin and Amir Sood -Lance Barredo, Lezlie Eulogio, Gavin Gayfield, Riley Hastert -Dylan Lossing, Mckenna Wink, Sofia Barosa, Glenneda Gonzales – Carlos Gonzalez & Jena Sanitan and Sierra Cragg.