Students, parents, and administrators filled the Los Al High School Performing Arts Center Friday to attend the premiere of “Left Field,” a double entendre title for a student-made film that briefly explores a mystery of sorts surrounding an “incident” involving a baseball team’s star pitcher.
The complex 16-minute short film is the second such film made completely by high schoolers under the tutelage of film and television teacher Conner Brown.
While last year’s film “6:20 a.m.” was made during COVID, this year’s offering demonstrated the potential of filmmaking without the shackles of a pandemic.
“I’m really excited to be a part of this project,” said Brown before the film. “I’m really excited to work with the students. This is such a cool project because it’s fully student made. The students write the scripts. They choose the director to represent them and meet the crew. They select actors and actresses to portray the roles and they do all the work,” he said.
Brown said “we work with industry-grade equipment that you actually see on real film sets. So, the students get amazing hands-on experience and it’s just such a great opportunity for them to learn,” said Brown from the stage shortly before the film was set to be shown.
The film premiere was complete with a so-called “step and repeat” banner and attended by luminary high school teachers, parents who starred in the film and Assistant Supt. for Business Services, Elvia Galicia, who represented the Los Alamitos Unified School District’s administration.
He said the film was directed by Ian McFerson (Junior) and Nikki Ocampo (Senior), and each of the roles and responsibilities, from crewmembers to directors, were also chosen by the students themselves.
“It truly was a professional film set. Students would work together to set up lights, actors, cameras, sound capture, and more to perfect the shot. And working with professional-grade film equipment really gave students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience on a real set.
Before production began, said Brown, the students had to choose a story to tell. “One story really stood out to us,” he said, “and that was from Junior Sofia Youngs who had written a murder mystery [set] in a diner. We chose her script and got to work on all the pre-production and planning to prepare the movie for filming.”
Led by Senior Elizabeth Schmidt, Senior Nikki Ocampo, Sophomore Bria Singleton, and Freshman Sarah Roudabush, our pre-production team worked with the director and writer to tweak and enhance the script.
“We ended up going in a different direction with the plot, but still wanted to keep that ’who done it’ theme to it,” said Brown. After finalizing the script, students were tasked with story-boarding the script to give detailed drawings of how each shot would look to best help the director and camera operators. While storyboards were being created, students began scouting locations where they could film specific scenes.
“After an extensive search, Pietrini Pizza Napoletana agreed to let our students come in and film inside their restaurant for an entire afternoon and evening. Next, Kirk Hasselbrink and LAYB allowed us to film on one of their baseball fields. And finally, Seal Beach Police Department were kind enough to partner with us and have our students be able to film in the police department and even the jail cell,” said Brown.
Casting tryouts were not limited to the Film and TV class, he said, but instead were opened to the entire school. “We were able to find roles for most students with Jacob Guerra, Catie Haynie, and Jonathan Odom (all Seniors) being cast as our lead characters,” he said.
“Our Director of Photography, Matthew Berry (Senior), with the help of our Key Grip, Grace Phelps (Junior), crafted an amazing filming rig to capture a shot of a baseball being thrown down at home plate,” he said, exclaiming that one scene looks like it is right out of a blockbuster movie set.
“This one specific shot [baseball headed to home plate] is something you would see out of a Hollywood budget movie. The ingenuity and craftsmanship of these students continually amaze me,” he said. “I have shown that shot to multiple people in the industry and they all are shocked that high school students made it.”
Editing was super challenging, said Brown, and took more than six weeks.
Editor Alexander Russell (Junior) led the way, he said, spending countless hours each day leading a team to perfect every minor detail in the story. “It’s been an exceedingly difficult process, and things really do start to add up, especially when finals were just around the corner,” said Russell.
Grace Phelps, the film’s key grip said “being a part of the making of Left Field was an amazing experience. Working as a key grip and camera operator allowed me to learn a lot about the filmmaking world. I gained skills and experience while simultaneously creating a great short film and making new memories.”
“My hope is that this will give students the experience and the confidence to go out and apply to the film school of their dreams or work in the film industry,” said Brown.
“Some of the students who are working on this project already have been accepted into USC Film, NYU Film, & Chapman Film just to name a few. Other students are already getting job offers to work on professional sets and projects right out of High School.
“I’m pretty proud of what these kids were able to do,” said Brown, “what they’re able to accomplish. For a high school film department, these guys are rock stars. They’re just doing amazing work.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated since the print edition. The length of the film has been properly noted as 16 minutes rather than 31 minutes.
