By ALEX COSTELLO
A combination of “film” and “movie,” the Foovie will be awarded to students who enter the best short movies at the First Annual Oceanside Schools Film Festival.
Students in the district have until April 3 to write, shoot and edit short films for the festival, all of which must incorporate the theme of the festival, which is “I Need to Tell the World.” The winners, as judged by faculty and staff at each school, will be screened in front of the community in the high school auditorium on June 5.
“We do a great thing with the District Arts Festival, where we display the best work of our kids in painting, drawing, and clay,” said Bob Fenter, principal of Oceanside Middle School. “And this is another opportunity to celebrate what our kids can do.”
Students can submit any kind of film for the festival. Genres suggested by the district include mystery, suspense, documentary, news cast, public service announcement (PSA), and musical. The films will then be categorized into drama, reality or comedy and then judged against other films in those categories.
Not all students in the district are going to be able to enter. In the elementary level, only the sixth graders will be making one-minute-long movies, and there will be one from each school. The sixth grade films will not be judged, but will still be screened on June 5.
“In each of the elementary schools, the library media specialists, the instructional assistants and the sixth grade teachers have come together to create a project,” said Sharonann Katcher, the library media specialist in School 9E. “In my building, it’s being done as a grade level project.
“The students do wonderful work,” she added. “You just let them loose with this stuff and they just take off.”
In the middle school, all eighth grade students in the Tech/Media class are making 30-60 second public service announcements, some in groups and some solo, for the festival.
“Some are very simple, and some of them are very not so simple,” Fenter said. “But each one of them focuses on an issue that that child or that group of children says, ‘we need to tell the world that this has to change.’” Fenter said that many of the students have chosen to do their PSAs on environmental issues.
While every student in the middle school has to create a PSA for class, not all of them are being entered into the film competition. In addition to the PSAs, some students are creating a more original film to be entered.
“Maybe have two announcers announcing a basketball game, and then what we would have is different interferences going on during the game,” said Zach Feldman, an OMS student, of possible ideas he was thinking about for his film. “Different types of announcements gone wrong.”
Feldman said that to create his ideas for films, he usually starts by just jotting down words. “Then I’d improvise on that,” he said. “And we try to start from there.”
One student, Daniel Gomez, said that his film would be about the good things bout Columbia. “[Not just] all the bad things that happen there,” he said.
On the high school level, students have more freedom and are able to create any type of film they want, so long as it follows the theme and is no longer than four minutes. Students in OHS’ film class and Film Club are participating in the festival, as well as others. The four best films in each category submitted by the high school students will be screened at the festival on June 5, and the winner will be announced that night.
“We would notify kids their film is being shown that night,” Fenter said. “And that night the winners will be announced. That way, it gives a little Oscar excitement to it.”
The film festival will be a gala for the school district. According to Fenter, the members of the OHS Film Club agreed to dress up as movie stars, and there will be signs in the high school lobby for the event. The award itself was designed by OMS technology teacher Michael Lawton, and he will be making more of them to be given to the winners at the festival.
Originally, the festival was going unfunded, but then the Staff Development Policy Board of the Oceanside Professional Center provided funding for the event, which is going to materials and supplies.
“It's very exciting," said Bruce Misher, the assistant superintendent for curriculum who also sits on the advisory board for the film festival along with Fenter. “We have some incredibly creative kids.”
But for some students, the film competition is less about winning a Foovie and more about having fun with their friends making a movie.
“It’s pretty much different memories captured,” Feldman said. “It’s a scrapbook.”
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