Screenshot courtesy of Gerstein

“Still Had a Dream Last Night”

Out of the shadows of the beach house appeared a ghastly figure that seized the audience with terror.

The Enzian Theater showcased its 25th annual Brouhaha Film Festival from Nov. 19 to Nov. 20 in Maitland, Fl. Out of the 60 films premiering, Trinity was able to squeeze in close to ten percent of the entries. Compared to other schools, it was an impressive feat considering Winter Park High School had three qualifiers, Maitland Middle School had two and the other featured films were from collegiate film majors as well as professionals.

The films selected were: “Seeing Stars” by senior Hayley Canal , “The Sea” by senior Peter Cowie, “Still Had a Dream Last Night” by junior Josh Gerstein, “The Acceptance” by senior Amy Sukserm and “The Box” by alumna Cameron Miller ‘16.

Ninety minutes worth of film were judged by a local panel of industry professionals to compete for a spot in the 2017 Florida Film Festival.

“I think all [of] the films were very different,” English Department Chair Steven Krueger said. “I think their individuality intrigues me and excites me about not just [the students] producing work but inspiring other students on campus to do something unique.”

Trinity’s success can be accredited to the expertise of our student filmmakers and the originality that their films possessed.

“Lots of times, beginning filmmakers use a single camera shot and there is [little] variance,” Computer Science Department Chair Ralph Mazza said. “These were innovative. They used a variety of shots.”

Gerstein’s film dealt with aspects of an apocalypse through an innocent human’s point of view. It features his little sister and her response to the event which, without having been influenced by the negative qualities of modern life, is sweet and pure.

“Originally it was my intention to create an animation, so I created some background color washes to do shadow animation,” Gerstein said.

Even though most of the films were several minutes long, the development cycle of each film produced was tedious.

“I have always been fascinated with how horror films generate strong emotions within people,” Cowie said. “I always wanted to generate the same results with my film.

Canal created a stop-motion video that looked as if faces were morphed together while lip-syncing “Seeing Stars.”

“I looked up how animators get their characters to say words in a film,” Canal said. “There are certain positions your mouth will make, and it can be narrowed down to [between] eight and ten [different positions.] They were saying really weird things like ‘mom,’ ‘moo’ and ‘umbrella.’”

The films exhibited at the Brouhaha Film Festival illustrated the motivation of our filmmakers to create outstanding motion pictures in a demanding academic environment. It required them to reach out to individuals in order for their plans to be executed.

“A lot of the film-creating has to be done on their own,” Mazza said. “It is very typical for filmmakers to have that internal drive to do it themselves. The more you do it, the better the quality. Having a creative eye is very important.”

Unfortunately, none of Trinity’s films were chosen to move on to the Florida Film Festival, but Brouhaha gave them a chance to reach out to a wider audience and get their work out into the public.

“It’s great that we have a community to reach to a little bit [so the filmmakers can] be seen and understood by people they have never met,” Krueger said. “Enzian is the type of environment where [artists] can project their artistic visions outwards into a broader world.”

The exposure and recognition that Brouhaha will provide for Trinity’s filmmakers will be indispensable to their careers.

“[The students] have their name out there and people in the industry will know who they are,” Mazza said. “It is [merely] a stepping stone into the future.”