By Gillian Brunette It takes a long time to produce a five-minute film. From writing the script to filming and editing, the process takes about a month, according to Huntsville High School media arts student Martine Glover. Glover is just one of many students from high schools across the Trillium Lakeland District School Board district who will be participating in a student film festival being held at the Algonquin Theatre tomorrow evening, May 15 at 7 p.m. Titled Passion, Glover’s clip, which shows people doing things they are passionate about, runs for a little over three minutes. 
One of the longer films, at six minutes, is titled The Heist. It is a satanic matrix featuring the good guys versus the bad guys, said Susanne Allen-Spiers, HHS visual and media arts department head, who together with teacher Jennifer Pogue was instrumental in bringing the film festival to reality. “A board-wide film festival did take place for about five years at the Gravenhurst Opera House and in Bracebridge but, last year, it didn’t happen as the co-ordinator retired,” Allen-Spiers explained. “I worked with Suzanne Riverin and the Huntsville Festival of the Arts on a mixed arts show at the theatre last year. It was met with rave reviews, so we followed up with the festival to see if there was an interest in doing something again.” With support coming from Reel Alternatives and the Huntsville Festival of the Arts, which are subsidizing the rental of the theatre for the evening, the Grade 11 and 12 media class got busy. “Past shows featured long and short movies, but we decided to go very short. We got enough material to put a film show together and we invited other schools to take part,” said Allen-Spiers, adding that as a result six schools from Muskoka, Lindsay, Haliburton and Almaguin are participating. Each film had to have a message about the students’ world, or how they would like to change it. “We ended up with so much product, we had to cut some,” said Allen-Spiers. Thirty films will be shown in the juried festival. Prizes will be awarded for the films that best communicate a message from the following categories: anti-smoking, respecting others, environmental, narrative with meaning, music video with meaning, and animation with meaning, plus an open category. “One of our supporters is the Muskoka Simcoe District Health Unit, who helped with funding as part of their 'Stomp Out' anti-smoking program. High schools are given grants to get out the message to not smoke. As such, we have created a category for anti-smoking,” said Pogue. Judges from the local media and film industry will evaluate the films based on the idea of the message they portray and the technical aspects and execution of the film in delivering that message. “Staples has donated the grand prize,” Pogue said. The evening also features a short talk from guest speaker Max Attwood, a young HHS graduate and former Reel Alternatives scholarship recipient, who went on to start a career in the film industry. He is currently working as an editor and second unit cinematographer on Season 3 of the Survivorman series. “I will be going on two shoots this season, the Arctic or Iceland and Wabakimi Park, which is as far north as you can go in Ontario,” said Attwood. Attwood took media arts in Grade 12 at HHS, but his love of the camera began long before that. “I bought my first video camera when I was 14. I always loved cameras and my friends and I would make movies for fun.” Allen-Spiers recalls Attwood’s passion for film- making. “He did a whole documentary on the screaming heads in Almaguin,” she said. After graduating from film and video production at Canadore College, Attwood joined Les Stroud Productions, where he has worked for the past two and a half years. Attwood’s presentation will also include some of his own work. “I’ll be showing two clips from Survivorman, because that’s the most recent thing I have done,” he said. Meanwhile, Pogue hopes that the film festival in this new format will be well received and will continue to grow. “Right now the generation of students learning media and its effects are very interested. Ours is a very successful course that has grown over the last couple of years,” she said. Tickets for the show are $10 each and can be purchased in advance at the Algonquin Theatre box office, 789-4975, or at the door.
