Frontier Students Create Silent Films For International Contest

Three students of Frontier School are in the movie business. Seventh-grader Ezekiel Payne, eighth-grader Reilly Rees and eighth-grader Kai Villaluz showed a silent film to fellow students after conducting on Friday, March 24.

The three-minute videos, the results of a nine-week project, were created by each student as an entry in the international youth silent film festival by makesilentfilm. com.

It was teacher Darla Warrior’s idea to make the offering available to Frontier’s students. Warrior, who teaches students about film, got excited when she heard about the contest.

“I just said, ‘I want my kids to do it,’ ” she said.

She noted that the project was 100 percent personalized learning. The students performed their own story- boarding, budgeting and even paid fellow students to serve as actors. The school district provided $100 for each of the young directors/ producers to cover expenses.

“I didn’t even see the films until today,” Warrior said on Friday.

The films will be judged against other entries from the states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota. If selected, they will be showcased during a silent film festival in Bozeman.

Titles of the films from the students were Boxes by Villaluz,

Dreams are Mysterious

by Payne and Slow is Smooth by Rees.

Payne said editing and coming up with different kind of shots were the most difficult parts of the project.

“It took about nine weeks,” Payne said. “Sometimes, all the actors wouldn’t show up.”

He even made the three masks needed for aliens in his production.

Rees noted about his project, “It was really fun making this. I enjoyed it a lot.”

All filmmakers in the competition must be 20 years or younger. Films needed to be approximately three minutes long and be family friendly.

Jurors will select winning entries based on scoring films on four categories: story, cinematography, editing and acting.