Central Filmmakers Premiere at Wild Rose Festival
Anna Steenson and Helena Gruensteidl are two of Central’s film student whose work premiered at the Wild Rose Film Festival.
These days technology has made it possible for just about anyone to be in the movies. Kids play filmmaker like past generations played sandlot games.
But only a select few high school students produce work that’s screened at an honest to goodness film festival.
Trevor Spidle, Anna Steenson, Helena Gruensteidl and Brandon Martinez, for instance.
All four are students in the Broadcasting & Film program at Central Campus under the tutelage of Kirk Johnson and Tim Coleman. Trevor’s home high school is Lincoln. The other three hail from Roosevelt. All of them produced music videos that opened the show on Thursday afternoon for the 12th annual Wild Rose Film Festival at the Fleur Cinema & Cafe.
Imagine finishing a school project and having it beamed up on the big screen in a darkened theater and watched by a rapt, wide-eyed audience munching popcorn.
Wild Rose is a friend of the B&F program at Central going back to the days when festival director Kim Busbee’s daughter was a student there before going on to pursue a career in the field.
“That program trains people in a professional way,” she said during introductory remarks prior to the opening block of screenings on Thursday. Then the lights dimmed.
Gruensteidl’s video was inspired by reflections on a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde duality and set to Bastille’s Of the Night.
Steenson’s paean to love’s many splendors is an interpretation of Nothing Here but Love by Lenka.
Martinez visualized the story of what can happen in the aftermath of spurned attentions that’s told in Monster by Aviator.
Spidle collaborated with a local rapper who calls himself Young Purpose on a depiction of YP’s Ignorance is Bliss.
Following their screenings each of the budding producers stepped into the spotlight for brief Q&A sessions. What kind of cameras did they use? What editing software? What’s next? They appeared flattered by others’ interest in their work if unaccustomed to it. But they could get used to it. Gruensteidl has a head start. She won a Golden Eddy at last year’s Cedar Rapids Film Festival for another music video she produced. Classify them all, “To Be Continued…”
By the time the week-long festival has run its course it will have graduated to full length features and documentaries spanning a wide spectrum of subjects. Included will be 60+ selections culled from among more than 500 submissions. There will be a short film executive produced by Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of his last projects, and a film directed by the afore-referenced DMPS grad Kaitlyn Busbee that was selected for screening at the prestigious Tribeca festival in New York City.
And it will all have opened with four music videos from the incubative studios at Central Campus, Des Moines.
